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FOLK-LORE 



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SHAKESPEARE 



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BY THE 



Rev. T. F. THISELTON DYER, M.A. Oxon. 

n 
AUTHOR OF " BRITISH POPULAR CUSTOMS, PAST AND PRESENT," ETC. 



* AUG 29 1889 *] 






NEW YORK 

HARPER & BROTHERS, FRAXKLIN SQUARE 
I 884 



.T5- 




r 



PREFACE. 

It would be difficult to overestimate the value which 
must be attached to the plays of Shakespeare in connection 
with the social life of the Elizabethan age. Possessed of a 
rich treasury of knowledge of a most varied kind, much of 
which he may be said to have picked up almost intuitively, 
he embellished his writings with a choice store of illustra- 
tions descriptive of the period in which he lived. Apart, 
too, from his copious references to the manners and cus- 
toms of the time, he seems to have had not only a wide 
knowledge of many technical subjects, but also an inti- 
mate acquaintance with the folk-lore of bygone days. How 
far this was the case may be gathered from the following 
pages, in which are collected and grouped together, as far 
as arrangement would permit, the various subjects relating 
to this interesting and popular branch of our domestic his- 
tory. It only remains for me to add that the edition of 
the poet's plays made use of is the " Globe," published by 
Messrs. Macmillan. 

T. F. Thiselton Dyer. 



CONTENTS, 



CHAP. PAGE 

I. Fairies i 

II. Witches 25 

III. Ghosts , . . ■ 43 

IV. Demonology and Devil-Lore 52 

V. Natural Phenomena 62 

VI. Birds 97 

VII. Animals 161 

VIII. Plants 201 

IX. Insects and Reptiles 250 

X. Folk-Medicine 264 

XI. Customs Connected with the Calendar . . . 296 

XII. Birth and Baptism 332 

XIII. Marriage 342 

XIV. De.\th and Burial 362 

XV. Rings and Precious Stones 386 

XVI. Sports and Pastimes 394 

XVII. Dances 424 



viii CONTENTS. 

CHAP. PAGE 

XVIII. Punishments 433 

XIX. Proverbs 444 

XX. Human Body 475 

XXI. Fishes 497 

XXII. Sundry Superstitions 505 

XXIII. Miscellaneous Customs, Etc 521 



INDEX 



549 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



CHAPTER I. 

FAIRIES. 

The wealth of Shakespeare's luxuriant imagination and 
glowing language seems to have been poured forth in the 
graphic accounts which he has given us of the fairy tribe. 
Indeed, the profusion of poetic imagery with which he has 
so richly clad his fairy characters is unrivalled, and the 
" Midsummer-Night's Dream " holds a unique position in 
so far as it contains the finest modern artistic realization of 
the fairy kingdom. Mr. Dowden, in his " Shakspere Primer " 
(1877, pp. 71, 72) justly remarks: "As the two extremes of 
exquisite delicacy, of dainty elegance, and, on the other 
hand, of thick-witted grossness and clumsiness, stand the 
fairy tribe and the group of Athenian handicraftsmen. The 
world of the poet's dream includes the two — a Titania, and 
a Bottom the weaver — and can bring them into grotesque 
conjunction. No such fairy poetry existed anywhere in 
English literature before Shakspere. The tiny elves, to 
whom a cowslip is tall, for whom the third part of a minute 
is an important division of time, have a miniature perfection 
which is charming. They delight in all beautiful and dainty 
things, and war with things that creep and things that fly, 
if they be uncomely ; their lives are gay with fine frolic and 
delicate revelry." Puck, the jester of fairyland, stands apart 
from the rest, the recognizable " lob of spirits," a rough, 
" fawn-faced, shock-pated little fellow, dainty-limbed shapes 
around him." Judging, then, from the elaborate account 



2 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

which the poet has bequeathed us of the fairies, it is evident 
that the subject ^Yas one in wliich he took a special interest. 
Indeed, the graphic pictures he has handed down to us of 

" Elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves ; 
And ye, that on the sands with printless foot, 
Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him 
When he comes back ; you demy-puppets that 
By moonshine do the green-sour ringlets make 
Whereof the ewe not bites," etc.. 



H 



show how intimately he was acquainted with the history 
of these little people, and what a complete knowledge he 
possessed of the superstitious fancies which had clustered 
round them. In Shakespeare's day, too, it must be remem- 
bered, fairies were much in fashion ; and, as Johnson remarks, 
common tradition had made themTamiliar. It has also been 
observed that, well acquainted, from the rural habits of his 
early life, with the notions of the peasantry respecting these 
beings, he saw that they were capable of being applied to a 
production of a species of the wonderful. Hence, as Mr. 
Halliwell Phillipps ' has so aptly written, " he founded his 
elfin world on the prettiest of the people's traditions, and 
has clothed it in the ever-living flowers of his own exuberant 
fancy." Referring to the fairy mythology in the " Midsum- 
mer-Night's Dream," it is described by Mr. Keightley'' as 
an attempt to blend " the elves of the village with the fays 
of romance." His fairies agree with the former in their 
diminutive stature — diminished, indeed, to dimensions in- 
appreciable by village gossips — in their fondness for danc- 
ing, their love of cleanliness, and their child -abstracting 
propensities. Like the fays, they form a community, ruled 
over by the princely Oberon and the fair Titania. There 
is a court and chivalry ; Oberon would have the queen's 
sweet changeling to be a " knight of his train, to trace the 
forests wild." Like earthly monarchs, he has his jester, 
" that shrewd and knavish sprite called Robin Goodfellow." 

' "Illustrations of the Fairy Mythology of 'A Midsummer-Nijht's 
Dream,' " 1845, p. xiii. 
* "Fairy Mythology," p. 325. 



FAIRIES. 2 

Of the fairy characters treated by Shakespeare may be 
mentioned Oberon, king of fairyland, and Titania, his queen. 
They are represented as keeping rival courts in consequence 
of a quarrel, the cause of which is thus told by Puck (" Mid- 
summer-Night's Dream," ii. i): 

" The king doth keep his revels here to-night : 
Take heed the queen come not within his sight ; 
For Oberon is passing fell and wrath, 
Because that she as her attendant hath 
A lovely boy, stolen from an Indian king; 
She never had so sweet a changeling; 
And jealous Oberon would have the child 
Knight of his train, to trace the forests wild ; 
But she perforce withholds the lov^ed boy, 
Crowns him with flowers and makes him all her joy ; 
And now they never meet in grove or green. 
By fountain clear, or spangled starlight sheen," etc. 

Oberon first appears in the old French romance of " Huon 
de Bjourdeaux," and is identical with Elberich, the dwarf 
king of the German story of Otnit in the " Heldenbuch." 
The name Elberich, or, as it appears in the " Nibelungen- 
lied," Albrich, was changed, in passing into French, first into 
Auberich, then into Auberon, and finally became our Oberon. 
He is introduced by Spenser in the " Fairy Queen " (book ii. 
cant. i. St. 6), where he describes Sir Guyon : 

" Well could he tournay, and in lists debate. 
And knighthood tooke of good Sir Huon's hand. 
When with King Oberon he came to faery land." 

And in the tenth canto of the same book (stanza 75) he is 
the allegorical representative of Henry VHI. The wise 
Elficleos left two sons, 

"of which faire Elfcron, 
The eldest brother, did untimely dy ; 
AVhose emptie place the mightie Oberon 
Doubly supplide, in spousall and dominion." 

" Oboram, King of Fayeries," is one of the characters in 
Greene's " James the Fourth." ' 

' Aldis Wright's " Midsummer-Night's Dream," 1877, Preface, pp. xv. 
xvi. ; Ritson's " Fairy Mythology," 1875, pp. 22, 23. 



4 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



^ 



The name Titania for the queen of the fairies appears to 
have been the invention of Shakespeare, for, as Mr. Ritson ' 
remarks, she is not " so called by any other writer." Why, 
however, the poet designated her by this title, presents, 
according to Mr. Keightley," no difficulty. " It was," he says, 
" the belief of those days that the fairies were the same as 
the classic nymphs, the attendants of Diana. The fairy 
queen was therefore the same as Diana, whom Ovid (Met. 
iii. 173) styles Titania." In Chaucer's "Merchant's Tale" 
Pluto is the king of faerie, and his queen, Proserpina, " Avho 
danced and sang about the well under the laurel in January's 
garden." ^ 

In " Romeo and Juliet " (i. 4) she is known by the more 
familiar appellation. Queen Mab. " I dream'd a dream to- 
night," says Romeo, whereupon Mercutio replies, in that 
well-known famous passage — • 

"O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you," 

this being the earliest instance in which Mab is used to 
designate the fairy queen. Mr. Thoms* thinks that the ori- 
gin of this name is to be found in the Celtic, and that it con- 
tains a distinct allusion to the diminutive form of the elfin 
sovereign. Mad, both in Welsh and in the kindred dia- 
lects of Brittany, signifies a child or infant, and hence it is 

a befitting epithet to one who 

" comes 
In shape no bigger than an agate-stone 
On the fore-finger of an alderman." 

Mr. Keightley suggests that Mab may be a contraction of 
Habundia, who, Heywood says, ruled over the fairies ; and 
another derivation is from Mabel, of which Mab is an abbre- 
viation. 

Among the references to Queen Mab we may mention 
Drayton's " Nymphidia:" 

' Essay on Fairies in " Fairy Mythology of Shakspeare," p. 23. 
''"Fairy Mythology," 1878, p. 325. 

^ Notes to "A Midsummer-Night's Dream,'' by Aldis Wright, 1877, 
Preface, p. xvi. 
*" Three Notelets on Shakespeare," pp. 100-107. 



FAIRIES. 5 

" Hence Oberon, him sport to make 
(Their rest when weary mortals take, 
And none but only fairies wake), 

Descendeth for his pleasure : 
And Mab, his merry queen, by night 
Bestrides young folks that lie upright," etc. 

Ben Jonson, in his " Entertainment of the Queen and 
Prince at Althrope," in 1603, describes as " tripping up the 
lawn a bevy of fairies, attending on Mab, their queen, who, 
falHng into an artificial ring that there was cut in the path, 
began to dance around." In the same masque the queen is 
thus characterized by a satyr; 

" This is Mab, the mistress fairy. 
That doth nightly rob the dairy, 
And can help or hurt the cherning 
As she please, without discerning," etc. 

Like Puck, Shakespeare has invested Queen Mab with 
mischievous properties, which '' identify her with the night 
hag of popular superstition," and she is represented as 
" Platting the manes of horses in the night." 

The merry Puck, who is so prominent an actor in " A 
Midsummer-Night's Dream," is the mischief-loving sprite, 
the jester of the fairy court, whose characteristics are roguery 
and sportiveness. In his description of him, Shakespeare, 
as Mr, Thoms points out, "has embodied almost every 
attribute with which the imagination of the people has 
invested the fairy race ; and has neither omitted one trait 
necessary to give brilliancy and distinctness to the likeness, 
nor sought to heighten its effect by the slightest exaggera- 
tion. For, carefully and elaborately as he has finished the 
picture, he has not in it invested the ' lob of spirits ' with 
one gift or quality which the popular voice of the age was 
not unanimous in bestowing upon him." Thus (ii. i) the 
fairy says : 

" Either I mistake your shape and making quite. 
Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite, 
Call'd Robin Goodfellow: are you not he 
That frights the maidens of the villagery ; 



6 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

Skim milk ; and sometimes labour in the quern, 
And bootless make the breathless housewife churn ; 
And sometime make the drink to bear no barm ; 
Mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm ? 
Those that Hobgoblin call you, and sweet Puck, 
You do their work, and they shall have good luck : 
Are not you he ?" 

The name " Puck " was formerly applied to the whole race 
of fairies, and not to any individual sprite — puck, or poiike, 
being an old word for devil, in which sense it is used in the 
" Vision of Piers Plowman :" 

" Out of the poukes pondfold 
No maynprise may us feeche." 

The Icelandic ptiki is the same word, and in Friesland and 
Jutland the domestic spirit is called Puk by the peasantry. 
In Devonshire, Piskey is the name for a fairy, with which 
we may compare the Cornish Pixey. In Worcestershire, too, 
we read how the peasantry are occasionally " poake-ledden," 
that is, misled by a mischievous spirit called poake. And, 
according to Grose's " Provincial Glossary," in Hampshire 
they give the name of Colt-pixey to a supposed spirit or 
fairy, which, in the shape of a horse, neighs, and misleads 
horses into bogs. The Irish, again, have their Pooka,' and 
the Welsh their Pwcca — both words derived from Pouke or 
Puck. Mr. Keightley' thinks, also, that the Scottish paia- 
kcy, sly, knowing, may belong to the same list of words. It 
is evident, then, that the term Puck was in bygone years 
extensively applied to the fairy race, an appellation still 
found in the west of England. Referring to its use in Wales, 
" there is a Welsh tradition to the effect that Shakespeare 
received his knowledge of the Cambrian fairies from his 
friend Richard Price, son of Sir John Price, of the Priory of 
Brecon." It is even claimed that Cwm Pwcca, or Puck Valley, 
a part of the romantic glen of the Clydach, in Breconshire, 
is the original scene of the " Midsummer-Night's Dream." ° 
Another of Puck's names was Robin Goodfellow, and one 

* See Croker's "Fairy Legends of South of Ireland," 1862, p. 135. 

""Fairy Mythology," 1878, p. 316. 

^ Wirt Sikes's " British Goblins," 1880, p. 20. 



FAIRIES. 7 

of the most valuable illustrations we have of the " Mid- 
summer-Night's Dream " is a black-letter tract published in 
London, 1628, under the title of "Robin Goodfellow : His 
Mad Pranks, and Merry Jests, full of honest mirth, and is 
a fit medicine for melancholy." ' Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps," 
speaking of Robin Goodfellow, says, " there can be no doubt 
that in the time of Shakespeare the fairies held a more 
prominent position in our popular literature than can be now 
concluded from the pieces on the subject that have descended 
to us." The author of " Tarlton's News out of Purgatory," 
printed in 1590, assures us that Robin Goodfellow was 
" famosed in every old wives chronicle for his mad merry 
pranks;" and we learn from " Henslowe's Diary" that Chettle 
w'as the writer of a drama on the adventures of that " merry 
wanderer of the night." These have disappeared ; and time 
has dealt so harshly with the memory of poor Robin that we 
might almost imagine his spirit was still leading us astray 
over massive volumes of antiquity, in a delusive search after 
documents forever lost ; or, rather, perhaps, it is his punish- 
ment for the useless journeys he has given our ancestors, 
misleading night-wanderers, "and laughing at their harm."^ 
He is mentioned by Drayton in his " Nymphidia:" 

" He meeteth Puck, which most men call 
Hob-goblin, and on him doth fall," etc., 

"hob being the familiar or diminutive form of Robert and 
Robin, so that Hobgoblin is equivalent to Robin the Gobhn, 
i.e., Robin Goodfellow." * Burton, in his " Anatomy of Mel- 
ancholy," alludes to him thus : " A bigger kinde there is of 
them, called with us hobgoblins and Robin Goodfellows, that 
would, in superstitious times, grinde cornc for a mess of milk, 
cut wood, or do any manner of drudgery work." Under his 

' This is reprinted in Hazlitt's " Fairy Tales, Legends, and Romances, 
illustrating Shakespeare and other English Writers," 1S75, p. 173. 

= " Illustrations of the Fairy Mythology of the Midsummer-Night's 
Dream," printed for the Shakespeare Society, p. viii. 

^ See Brand's "Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. ii. pp. 50S-512. 

* Thoms's " Three Notelcts on Shakespeare," p. 88. 



8 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

name of Robin Goodfellow, Puck is well characterized in 
Jonson's masque of " Love Restored." ' 

Another epithet applied to Puck is " Lob," as in the " Mid- 
summer-Night's Dream" (ii. i), where he is addressed by 
the fairy as 

"Thou lob of spirits."* 

With this we may compare the "lubber-fiend" of Milton, 
and the following in Beaumont and Fletcher's " Knight of 
the Burning Pestle " (iii. 4) : " There is a pretty tale of a witch 
that had the devil's mark about her, that had a giant to be 
her son, that was called Lob-lye-by-the-Fire." Grimm' 
mentions a spirit, named the " Good Lubber," to whom the 
bones of animals used to be offered at Manseld, in Germany. 
Once more, the phrase of " being in," or " getting into Lob's 
pound," is easy of explanation, presuming Lob to be a fairy 
epithet — the term being equivalent to Poake-ledden or Pixy- 
led.^ * In " Hudibras" this term is employed as a name for 
the stocks in which the knight puts Crowdero : 

"Crowdero, whom in irons bound, 
Thou basely threw'st into Lob's pound." 

It occurs, also, in Massinger's " Duke of Milan " (iii. 2), 
where it means " behind the arras :" 

" Who forc'd the gentleman, to save her credit, 
To marry her, and say he was the party 
Found in Lob's pound." 

The allusion by Shakespeare to the " Will-o'-the-Wisp," 
where he speaks of Puck as "sometime a fire," is noticed 
elsewhere, this being one of the forms under which this 
fairy was supposed to play his midnight pranks. 

Referring, in the next place, to the several names of 
Shakespeare's fairies, we may quote from " The Merry 
Wives of Windsor " (iv. 3), where Mrs. Page speaks of 

' See Nares's Glossary, vol. ii. p. 695. 
' "^ Mr. Dyce considers that Lob is descriptive of the contrast between 
Puck's square figure and the airy shapes of the other fairies. 
^ " Deutsche Mythologie," p. 492. 
* See Keightley's " Fairy Mythology," pp. 318, 319. 



FAIRIES. g 

"urchins, ouphes, and fairies" — urchin having been an ap- 
pellation for one class of fairies. In the " Maydes' Meta- 
morphosis" of Lyly (1600), we find fairies, elves, and urchins 
separately accommodated with dances for their use. The 
following is the iircliiiis dance : 

" By the moone we sport and play, 
With the night begins our day; 
As we frisk the dew doth fall, 
Trip it, little urchins all, 
Lightly as the little bee. 
Two by two, and three by three. 
And about goe wee, goe wee." 

In "The Tempest" (i. 2) their actions are also limited to 

the night : 

" Urchins 
Shall, for that vast of night that they may work. 
All exercise on thee." 

The children employed to torment Falstaff, in " The Merry 
Wives of Windsor" (iv. 4), were to be dressed in these fairy 
shapes. 

Mr. Douce regards the word iircJiiii, when used to desig- 
nate a fairy, as of Celtic origin, with which view Mr. Thoms' 
compares the iirisks of Highland fairies. 

The term oiip/ic, according to Grimm, is only another 
form of the cognate c/f, which corresponds with the Middle 
High-German 2ilf, in the plural ttlve. He further proves the 
identity of this ////"with a/p, and with our English elf, from 
a Swedish song published by Asdwiddson, in his " Collection 
of Swedish Ballads," in one version of which the elfin king 
is called Herr Elfvcr, and in the second Herr Ulfvcr. 

The name r//", which is frequently used by Shakespeare, is 
the same as the Anglo-Saxon alf, the Old High-German and 
the Middle High-German iilf. " Fairies and elvs," says 
Toilet, " arc frequently mentioned together in the poets 
without any distinction of character that I can recollect." 

The other fairies, Peas-blossom, Cobweb, Moth, and Mustard- 
seed probably owe their appellations to the poet himself 

' " Three Notelets on Shakespeare," pp. 79-82. 



IQ FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

How fully Shakespeare has described the characteristics 
of the fairy tribe, besides giving a detailed account of their 
habits and doings, may be gathered from the following pages, 
in which we have briefly enumerated the various items of 
fairy lore as scattered through the poet's writings. 

Beauty, then, united with power, was one of the popular 
characteristics of the fairy tribe. Such was that of the 
" Fairy Queen" of Spenser, and of Titania in "A Midsum- 
mer-Night's Dream." In "Antony and Cleopatra" (iv. 8), 
Antony, on seeing Cleopatra enter, says to Scarus : 

" To this great fairy I'll commend thy acts, 
Make her thanks bless thee." 

In "Cymbeline" (iii. 6), when the two brothers find Imogen 
in their cave, Belarius exclaims : 

" But that it eats our victuals, I should think 
Here were a fairy." ' 

And he then adds : 

" By Jupiter, an angel ! or, if not, 
An earthly paragon ! behold divineness 
No elder than a boy." 

The fairies, as represented in many of our old legends and 
folk-tales, are generally noticeable for their beauty, the same 
being the case with all their surroundings. As Sir Walter 
Scott,° too, says, " Their pageants and court entertainments 
comprehended all that the imagination could conceive of 
what were accounted gallant and splendid. At their pro- 
cessions they paraded more beautiful steeds than those of 
mere earthly parentage. The hawks and hounds which they 
employed in their chase were of the first race. At their 
daily banquets, the board was set forth with a splendor which 
the proudest kings of the earth dared not aspire to, and the 
hall of their dancers echoed to the most exquisite music." 

Mr. Douce' quotes from the romance of" Lancelot of the 

' Showing, as Mr. Ritson says, that they never ate. 

' " Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft," 1831, p. 121. 

= " Illustrations of Shakespeare," p. 115. 



FAIRIES. II 

Lake," where the author, speaking of the days of King Ar- 
thur, says, " En celui temps estoient appellees faces toutes 
selles qui sentre-mettoient denchantemens et de charmes, et 
moult en estoit pour lors principalement en la Grande Bre- 
taigne, et savoient la force et la vertu des paroles, des pierres, 
et des herbes, parquoy elles estoient tenues et jeunesse et en 
beaulte, et en grandes richesses comme elles devisoient." 

" This perpetual youth and beauty," he adds, " cannot 
well be separated from a state of immortality ;" another 
characteristic ascribed to the fairy race. It is probably al- 
luded to by Titania in "A Midsummer-Night's Dream' 

(ii.i): 

" The human mortals want their winter here." 

And further on (ii. i), when speaking of the changeling's 
mother, she says : 

" But she, being mortal, of that boy did die." 

Again, a fairy addresses Bottom the weaver (iii. i) — 

" Hail, mortal !" 

— an indication that she was not so herself. The very fact, 
indeed, that fairies " call themselves spirits, ghosts, or shadows, 
seems to be a proof of their immortality." Thus Puck styles 
Oberon " king of shadows," and this monarch asserts of him- 
self and his subjects — • 

" But we are spirits of another sort." 
Fletcher, in the " Faithful Shepherdess," describes (i. 2) — 

" A virtuous well, about whose fiow'ry banks 
The nimble-footed fairies dance their rounds. 
By the pale moonshine, dipping oftentimes 
Their stolen children, so to make them free 
From dying flesh, and dull mortality." 

Ariosto, in his "Orlando Furioso" (book xliii. stanza 98) 

says : 

" I am a fayrie, and to make you know, 
To be a fayrie what it doth import, 
We cannot dye, how old so e'er we grow. 
Of paines and harmes of ev'rie other sort 
We taste, onelie no death we nature ow." 



l'2 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

An important feature of the fairy race was their power of 
vanishing at will, and of assuming various forms. In " A 
Midsummer-Night's Dream " Oberon says : 

" I am invisible, 
And I will overhear their conference." 

Puck relates how he was in the habit of taking all kinds of 
outlandish forms ; and in the " Tempest," Shakespeare has 
bequeathed to us a graphic account of Ariel's eccentricities. 
" Besides," says Mr. Spalding,' " appearing in his natural 
shape, and dividing into flames, and behaving in such a man- 
ner as to cause young Ferdinand to leap into the sea, crying, 
' Hell is empty, and all the devils are here!' he assumes the 
forms of a water nymph (i. 2), a harpy (iii. 3), and also the 
Goddess Ceres (iv. i), while the strange shapes, masquers, 
and even the hounds that hunt and worry the would-be king 
and viceroys of the island, are Ariel's 'meaner fellows.'" 
Poor Caliban complains of Prospero's spirits (ii. 2) : 

" For every trifle are they set upon me ; 
Sometimes like apes, that mow and chatter at me. 
And after bite me ; then like hedgehogs which 
Lie tumbling in my bare-foot way, and mount 
Their pricks at my footfall ; sometime am I 
All wound with adders, who, with cloven tongues 
Do hiss me into madness." 

That fairies are sometimes exceedingly diminutive is fully 
shown by Shakespeare, who gives several instances of this 
peculiarity. Thus Queen Mab, in " Romeo and Juliet," to 
which passage we have already had occasion to allude (i. 4), 
is said to come 

" In shape no bigger than an agate stone 
On the fore-finger of an alderman." * 

' " Elizabethan Demonology," p. 50. 

^ Agate was used metaphorically for a very diminutive person, in al- 
lusion to the small figures cut in agate for rings. In " 2 Henry IV." (i. 
2), Falstaff says : " I was never manned with an agate till now ; but I will 
inset you neither in gold nor silver, but in vile apparel, and send you 
back again to your master, for a jewel." In " Much Ado About Noth- 
ing" (iii. i) Hero speaks of a man as being " low, an agate very vilely 
cut." 



FAIRIES. 13 

And Puck tells us, in " A Midsummer-Night's Dream" (ii. i), 
that when Oberon and Titania meet, 

" they do square, that all their elves, for fear. 
Creep into acorn cups, and hide them there." 

Further on (ii. 3) the duties imposed by Titania upon her 
train point to their tiny character: 

" Come, now a roundel and a fairy song ; 
Then, for the third part of a minute, hence ; 
Some to kill cankers in the musk-rose buds. 
Some war with rere-mice for their leathern wings, 
To make my small elves coats." 

And when enamoured of Bottom, she directs her elves that 
they should — ■ 

" Hop in his v.-alks and gambol in his eyes ; 
Feed him with apricocks and dewberries. 
With purple grapes, green figs, and mulberries ; 
The honey bags steal from the humble-bees. 
And for night tapers crop their waxen thighs 
And light them at the fiery glow-worm's eyes. 
To have my love to bed, and to arise ; 
And pluck the wings from painted butterflies 
To fan the moonbeams from his sleeping eyes." 

We may compare, too, Ariel's well-known song in "The 
Tempest " (v. i) : 

" Where the bee sucks, there suck I : 

In a cowslip's bell I lie ; 

There I couch when owls do cry. 

On the bat's back I do fly 

After summer merrily. 
Merrily, merrily shall I live now 
Under the blossom that hangs on the bough." 

Again, from the following passage in " The INIcrry Wives 
of Windsor" (iv. 4) where Mrs. Page, after conferring with 
her husband, suggests that — 

" Nan Page my daughter, and my little son. 
And three or four more of their growth, we'll dress 
Like urchins, ouphes, and fairies, green and white. 
With rounds of waxen tapers en their heads, 
And rattles in their hands " 



H 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



it is evident that in Shakespeare's day fairies were supposed 
to be of the size of children. The notion of their diminu- 
tiveness, too, it appears was not confined to this country,* 
but existed in Denmark,^ for in the ballad of " Eline of Vil- 
lenskov " we read : 

" Out then spake the smallest Trold ; 
No bigger than an ant ; — 
Oh ! here is come a Christian man. 
His schemes I'll sure prevent." 

Again, various stories are current in Germany descriptive 
of the fairy dwarfs ; one of the most noted being that re- 
lating to Elberich, who aided the Emperor Otnit to gain the 
daughter of the Paynim Soldan of Syria.^ 

The haunts of the fairies on earth are generally supposed 
to be the most romantic and rural that can be selected ; 
such a spot being the place of Titania's repose described by 
Oberon in "A Midsummer-Night's Dream " (ii. i):" 

"a bank where the wild thyme blows. 
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows, 
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine. 
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine : 
There sleeps Titania some time of the night, 
LuU'd in these flowers with dances and delight ; 
And there the snake throws her enameird skin. 
Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in." 

Titania also tells how the fairy race meet 

" on hill, in dale, forest, or mead. 
By paved fountain, or by rushy brook. 
Or in the beached margent of the sea." 

In " The Tempest " (v. i), we have the following beautiful 
invocation by Prospero : 

" Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves ; 
And ye, that on the sands with printless foot 
Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him 
When he comes back — " 

' See Grimm's " Deutsche Mythologie." 

- Thoms's "Three Notelets on Shakespeare," 1865, pp. 38, 39. 

^ See Keightley's " Fairy Mythology," 1878, p. 208. 

* See also Thorpe's " Northern Mythology," 1852, vol. iii. p. 32, etc. 



FAIRIES. 15 

Their haunts, however, varied in different locaHties, but their 
favorite abode was in the interior of conical green hills, on 
the slopes of which they danced by moonlight. Milton, in 
the "Paradise Lost" (book i.), speaks of 

" fairy elves, 
Whose midnight revels, by a forest side 
Or fountain, some belated peasant sees, 
Or dreams he sees, while overhead the moon 
Sits arbitress, and nearer to the earth 
Wheels her pale course, they, on their mirth and dance 
Intent, with jocund music charm his ear ; 
At once with joy and fear his heart rebounds." 

The Irish fairies occasionally inhabited the ancient burial- 
places known as tumuli or barrows, while some of the Scot- 
tish fairies took up their abode under the "door-stane" or 
threshold of some particular house, to the inmates of which 
they administered good offices.' 

The so-called fairy-rings in old pastures" — little circles of 
a brighter green, within which it was supposed the fairies 
dance by night — are now known to result from the out- 
spreading propagation of a particular mushroom, the fairy- 
ringed fungus, by which the ground is manured for a richer 
following vegetation. An immense deal of legendary lore, 
however, has clustered round this curious phenomenon, 
popular superstition attributing it to the merry roundelays 
of the moonlight fairies.^ In " The Tempest" (v. i) Prospero 
invokes the fairies as the " demy-puppets " that 

" By moonshine do the green-sour ringlets make, 
Whereof the ewe not bites ; and you, whose pastime 
Is to make midnight-mushrooms." 

1 Gunyon's " Illustrations of Scottish History, Life, and Supersti- 
tions," p. 299. 

■ Chambers's " Book of Days," vol. i. p. 671. 

^ Among the various conjectures as to the cause of these verdant cir- 
cles, some have ascribed them to lightning; others maintained that 
they are occasioned by ants. See Miss Baker's " Northamptonshire 
Glossary," vol. i. p. 218 ; Brand's " Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. ii. pp. 4S0- 
483 ; and also the " Phytologist," ic62, pp. 236-238. 



1 5 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

In "A Midsummer-Night's Dream" (ii. i), the fairy says: 

" I do wander everywhere, 
Swifter than the moon's sphere ; 
And I serve the fairy queen, 
To dew her orbs upon the green." 

Again, in the '' Merry Wives of Windsor" (v. 5), Anne 
Page says : 

" And nightly, meadow-fairies, look, you sing 
Like to the Garter's compass, in a ring ; 
The expressure that it bears, green let it be, 
More fertile-fresh than all the field to see." 

And once in " Macbeth" (v. i), Hecate says: 

" Like elves and fairies in a ring." 

Drayton, in his "Nymphidia" (1. 69-72), mentions this 
superstition : 

" And in their courses make that round, 
In meadows and in marshes found. 
Of them so called the fayrie ground, 
Of which they have the keeping." 

Cowley, too, in his " Complaint," says : 

" Where once such fairies dance, no grass does ever grow." 
And again, in his ode upon Dr. Harvey : 

" And dance, like fairies, a fantastic round." 

Pluquet, in his " Contes Populaires de Bayeux," tells us 
that the fairy rings^ called by the peasants of Normandy 
" Cercles des fees," are said to be the work of fairies. 

Among the numerous superstitions which have clustered 
round the fairy rings, we are told that when damsels of old 
gathered the May dew on the grass, which they made use 
of to improve their complexions, they left undisturbed such 
of it as they perceived on the fairy-rings, apprehensive that 
the fairies should in revenge destroy their beauty. Nor was 
it considered safe to put the foot within the rings, lest they 
should be liable to the fairies' power.' The " Athenian 

" Douce's " Illustrations of Shakespeare," p. 112. 



FAIRIES. ij 

Oracle" (i. 397) mentions a popular belief that " if a house 
be built upon the ground where fairy rings are, whoever 
shall inhabit therein does wonderfully prosper." 

Speaking of their dress, we are told that they constantly 
wore green vests, unless they had some reason for changing 
their attire. In the " Merry Wives of Windsor" (iv. 4) they 
are spoken of as — 

" Urchins, ouphes, and fairies, green and white." 

And further on (v. 4) : 

" Fairies, black, grey, green, and white." 

The fairies of the moors were often clad in heath-brown 
or lichen-dyed garments, whence the epithet of" Elfin-grey."' 

The legends of most countries are unanimous in ascribing 
to the fairies an inordinate love of music; such harmonious 
sounds as those which Caliban depicts in " The Tempest " 
(iii. 2) being generally ascribed to them : 

" The isle is full of noises, 
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not. 
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments 
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices 
That, if I then had waked after long sleep, 
Will make me sleep again."' 

In the " Midsummer-Night's Dream " (ii. 3), when Titania 
is desirous of taking a nap, she says to her attendants : 

" Come, now a roundel, and a fairy song." 

And further on (iii. i) she tells Bottom: 

" I'll giv^e thee fairies to attend on thee. 
And they shall fetch thee jewels from the deep. 
And sing, while thou on pressed flowers dost sleep." 

The author of " Round About our Coal Fire"' tells us 
that " they had fine musick always among themselves, and 
danced in a moonshiny night, around, or in, a ring." 



' Ritson's " Fairy Mythology," 187S, pp. 26, 27. 
° Quoted by Brand, " Pop. Antiq.," vol. ii. p. 4S1. 



1 8 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

They were equally fond of dancing, and we are told how 
they meet — 

" To dance their ringlets to the whistling wind ;" 

and in the " Maydes' Metamorphosis " of Lyly, the fairies, 
as they dance, sing : 

" Round about, round about, in a fine ring a. 
Thus we dance, thus we dance, and thus we sing a, 
Trip and go, to and fro, over this green a, 
All about, in and out, for our brave queen a," etc. 

As Mr. Thoms says, in his " Three Notelets on Shake- 
speare " (1865, pp. 40, 41), "the writings of Shakespeare 
abound in graphic notices of these fairy revels, couched in 
the highest strains of poetry ; and a comparison of these 
with some of the popular legends which the industry of 
Continental antiquaries has preserved will show us clearly 
that these delightful sketches of elfin enjoyment have been 
drawn by a hand as faithful as it is masterly." 

It would seem that the fairies disliked irreligious people ; 
and so, in " Merry Wives of Windsor " (v. 5), the mock fairies 
are said to chastise unchaste persons, and those who do not 
say their prayers. This coincides with what Lilly, in his 
" Life and Times," says : " Fairies love a strict diet and up- 
right life; fervent prayers unto God conduce much to the 
assistance of those who are curious hereways," i.e., who wish 
to cultivate an acquaintance with them. 

Again, fairies are generally represented as great lovers and 
patrons of cleanliness and propriety, for the observance of 
which they were frequently said to reward good servants, 
by dropping money into their shoes in the night ; and, on 
the other hand, they were reported to punish most severely 
the sluts and slovenly, by pinching them black and blue.' 
Thus, in "A Midsummer-Night's Dream " (v. i), Puck says: 

" I am sent, with broom, before, 
To sweep the dust behind the door." 

' Brand's " Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. ii. p. 483. 



FAIRIES. in 

In " Merry Wives of Windsor " (v. 5), Pistol, speaking of 
the mock fairy queen, says : 

" Our radiant queen hates sluts and sluttery ;" . 

and the fairies who haunt the towers of Windsor are en- 
joined : 

" About, about, 
Search Windsor Castle, elves, within and out : 
Strew good luck, ouphes, on every sacred room : 

* * * H: * 

The several chairs of order look you scour 
With juice of balm and every precious flower." 

In Ben Jonson's ballad of " Robin Goodfellow " ' v/e have a 
further illustration of this notion : 

" When house or hearth doth sluttish lie, 
I pinch the maidens black and blue, 
The bed clothes from the bed pull I, 
And lay them naked all to view. 
'Twixt sleep and wake 
I do them take. 
And on the key-cold floor them throw; 
If out they cry. 
Then forth I fly. 
And loudly laugh I, ho, ho, ho !" 

In " Round About our Coal Fire," we find the following pas- 
sage bearing on the subject : " When the master and mis- 
tress were laid on the pillows, the men and maids, if they 
had a game at romps, and blundered up stairs, or jumbled a 
chair, the next morning every one would swear 'twas the 
fairies, and that they heard them stamping up and down 
stairs all night, crying, ' Waters lock'd, waters lock'd !' when 
there was no water in every pail in the kitchen." Herrick, 
too, in his " Hesperides," speaks of this superstition : 

" If ye will with Mab find grace. 
Set each platter in his place ; 
Rake the fire up, and set 
Water in, ere sun be set, 

' Halliwell-Phillipps's "Illustrations of Fairy Mytholog}'," p. 167; 
see Douce's " Illustrations of Shakespeare," pp. 122, 123. 



20 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

Wash your pales and cleanse your dairies, 
Sluts are loathezome to the fairies : 
Sweep your house ; who doth not so, 
Mab will pinch her by the toe." 

While the belief in the power of fairies existed, they were 
supposed to perform much good service to mankind. Thus, 
in "A Midsummer-Night's Dream " (v. i), Oberon says: 

" With this field-dew consecrate, 
Every fairy take his gait ; 
And each several chamber bless, 
Through this palace, with sweet peace ; 
And the owner of it blest. 
Ever shall in safety rest " — 

the object of their blessing being to bring peace upon the 
house of Theseus. Mr. Douce' remarks that the great in- 
fluence which the belief in fairies had on the popular mind 
" gave so much offence to the holy monks and friars, that 
they determined to exert all their power to expel these im- 
aginary beings from the minds of the people, by taking the 
office of the fairies' benedictions entirely into their own 
hands ;" a proof of which we have in Chaucer's " Wife of 
Bath :" 

" I speke of many hundred yeres ago ; 
But now can no man see non elves mo. 
For now the grete charitee and prayeres 
Of limitoures and other holy freres 
That serchen every land and every streme. 
As thikke as motes in the sonne beme, 
Blissing halles, chambres, kichenes, and boures, 
Citees and burghes, castles highe and toures, 
Thropes and bernes, shepenes and dairies. 
This maketh that ther ben no faeries : 
For ther as wont to walken was an elf 
Ther walketh now the limitour himself." 

Macbeth, too (v. 8), in his encounter with Macduff, says: 

" I bear a charmed life, which must not yield 
To one of woman born." 

' " Illustrations of Shakespeare," pp. 126, 127. 



FAIRIES. 21 

In the days of chivalry, the champion's arms were ceremo- 
niously blessed, each taking an oath that he used no charmed 
weapon. In Spenser's " Fairy Queen " (book i. canto 4) we 

read : 

" he bears a charmed shield, 
And eke enchanted arms, that none can pierce." 

Fairies were amazingly expeditious in their journeys. 
Thus, Puck goes " swifter than arrow from the Tartar's 
bow," and in "A Midsummer-Night's Dream" he answers 
Oberon, who was about to send him on a secret expedition : 

" I'll put a girdle round about the earth 
In forty minutes." 

Again, the same fairy addresses him : « 

" Fairy king, attend, and mark : 
I do hear the morning lark. 

Oberon. Then, my queen, in silence sad, 
Trip we after the night's shade : 
We the globe can compass soon, 
Swifter than the wand'ring moon." 

Once more. Puck says : 

" My fairy lord, this must be done with haste. 
For night's swift dragons cut the clouds full fast, 
And yonder shines Aurora's harbinger," etc. 

It was fatal, if we may believe Falstaff in " Merry Wives 
of Windsor" (v. 5), to speak to a fairy: "They arc fairies; 
he that speaks to them shall die." 

Fairies are accustomed to enrich their favorites ; and in 
" A Winter's Tale " (iii. 3) the shepherd says : " It was told 
me I should be rich by the fairies;"' and in " Cymbeline " 
(v. 4), Posthumus, on waking and finding the mysterious 
paper, exclaims: 

" What fairies haunt this ground ? A book ? O rare one ! 
Be not, as is our fangled world, a garment 
Nobler than that it covers," etc. 



' See Croker's " Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ire- 
land, p. 316. 



22 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

At the same time, however, it was unlucky to reveal their 
acts of generosity, as the shepherd further tells us : " This is 
fairy gold, boy; and 'twill prove so; up with't, keep it close, 
home, home, the next way. We are lucky, boy ; and to be 
so still requires nothing but secrecy." 

The necessity of secrecy in fairy transactions of this kind 
is illustrated in Massinger and Field's play of "The Fatal 
Dowry," 1632 (iv. i),' where Romont says: 

" But not a word o' it ; 'tis fairies' treasure, 
Which, but reveal'd, brings on the blabber's ruin." 

Among the many other good qualities belonging to the 
fairy tribe, we are told that they were humanely attentive 
to the youthful dead." Thus Guiderius, in " Cymbeline," 
thinking that Imogen is dead (iv. 2), says : 

" With female fairies will his tomb be haunted, 
And worms will not come to thee ;" ^ 

there having been a popular notion that where fairies resort- 
ed no noxious creature could be found. 

In the pathetic dirge of Collins a similar allusion is made: 

" No wither'd witch shall here be seen. 
No goblin lead their nightly crew ; 
The female fays shall haunt the green, 
And dress thy grave with pearly dew." 

It seems, however, that they were also supposed to be ma- 
lignant ; but this, " it may be," says Mr. Ritson, " was merely 
calumny, as being utterly inconsistent with their general 
character, which was singularly innocent and amiable." 
Thus, when Imogen, in "Cymbeline" (ii. 2), prays on going 
to sleep, 

" From fairies and the tempters of the night. 
Guard me, beseech ye," * 

' See Brand's " Pop. Antiq., vol. ii. p. 493. 

^ Ritson 's " Fairy Mythology of Shakespeare," 1875, p. 29. 

^ Some copies read them. 

* We may compare Banquo's words in " Macbeth " (ii. i) : 

" Restrain in me the cursed thoughts that nature 
Gives way to in repose." 



FAIRIES. 23 

it must have been, says Mr. Ritson,' the incubus she was so 
afraid of. 

Hamlet, too, notices this imputed maHgnity of the fairies 

(i.i): 

" Then no planet strikes, 
Nor fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm." - 

That the fairies, however, were fond of indulging in mis- 
chievous sport at the expense of mortals is beyond all 
doubt, the merry pranks of Puck or Robin Goodfellow fully 
illustrating this item of our fairy-lore. Thus, in " A Mid- 
summer-Night's Dream " (ii. i) this playful fairy says: 

" I am that merry wanderer of the night. 
I jest to Oberon and make him smile. 
When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile, 
Neighing- in likeness of a filly foal : 
And sometime lurk I in a gossip's bowl, 
In very likeness of a roasted crab ; 
And when she drinks, against her lips I bob, 
And on her wither'd dewlap pour the ale. 
The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale. 
Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me ; 
Then slip I from her bum, down topples she, 
And ' tailor ' cries, and falls into a cough." 

A fairy, in another passage, asks Robin : 

" Are you not he 
That frights the maidens of the villagery, 
***** 
Mislead night- wanderers, laughing at their harm ?" 

We have already mentioned how Queen Mab had the 
same mischievous humor in her composition, which is de- 
scribed by Mercutio in " Romeo and Juliet " (i. 4): 

" This is that very Mab 
That plats the manes of horses in the night. 
And bakes the elflocks in foul sluttish hairs. 
Which, once untangled, much misfortune bodes." 

' " Fairy Mytholog}^" pp. 27, 28. 

"^ In " Comedy of Errors " (iv. 2) some critics read : 

" A fiend, a fairy, pitiless and rough." 



i 



24 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



Another reprehensible practice attributed to the fairies 
was that of carrying off and exchanging children, such being 
designated changeHngs.' The special agent in transactions 
of the sort was also Queen Mab, and hence Mercutio says : 

" She is the fairies' midwife." 

And "she is so called," says Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, "be- 
cause it was her supposed custom to steal new-born babes 
in tlie night and leave others in their place." Mr. Steevens 
gives a different interpretation to this line, and says, " It 
does not mean that she was the midwife to the fairies, but 
that she was the person among the fairies whose department 
it was to deliver the fancies of sleeping men in their dreams, 
those children of an idle brain." 

' This superstition is fully described in chapter on Birth. 



CHAPTER 11. 

WITCHES. 

In years gone by witchcraft was one of the grossest forms 
of superstition, and it would be difficult to estimate the ex- 
tent of its influence in this and other countries. It is not 
surprising that Shakespeare should have made frequent allu- 
sions to this popular belief, considering how extensively it 
prevailed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries ; the re- 
ligious and dramatic literature of the period being full of it. 
Indeed, as Mr. Williams' points out, " what the vulgar super- 
stition must ha\'e been may be easily conceived, when men 
of the greatest genius or learning credited the possibility, 
and not only a theoretical but possible occurrence, of these 
infernal phenomena." Thus, Francis Bacon was " not able 
to get rid of the principles upon which the creed was based. 
Sir Edward Coke, his contemporary, the most acute lawyer 
of the age, ventured even to define the devil's agents in 
witchcraft. Sir Thomas Browne and Sir Matthew Hale, in 
1664, proved their faith — the one by his solemn testimony 
in open court, the other by his still more solemn sentence." 
Hence, it was only to be expected that Shakespeare should 
introduce into his writings descriptions of a creed which 
held such a prominent place in the history of his day, and 
which has made itself famous for all time by the thousands 
of victims it caused to be sent to the torture-chamber, to 
the stake, and to the scaffold. Thus he has given a graphic 
account of the celebrated Jeanne D'Arc, the Maid of Or- 
leans, in " I Henry VI.," although Mr. Dowdcn" is of opinion 
that this play was written by one or more authors, Greene 

' " Superstitions of Witchcraft," 1865, p. 220. 
" " Shakspcre Primer," 1877, p. 63. 



26 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

having had, perhaps, a chief hand in it, assisted by Peele and 
Marlowe. He says, " It is a happiness not to have to ascribe 
to our greatest poet the crude and hateful handling of the 
character of Joan of Arc, excused though to some extent it 
may be by the occurrence of view in our old English chron- 
icles." 

Mr. Lecky,' too, regards the conception of Joan of Arc 
given in " i Henry VI." as " the darkest blot upon the poet's 
genius," but it must be remembered that we have only ex- 
pressed the current belief of his day — the English vulgar 
having regarded her as a sorceress, the French as an inspired 
heroine. Talbot is represented as accusing her of being a 
witch, serving the Evil One, and entering Rouen by means 
of her sorceries (iii. 2) : 

" France, thou shall rue this treason with thy tears, 
If Talbot but. survive thy treachery. 
Pucelle, that witch, that damned sorceress, 
Hath wrought this hellish mischief unawares, 
That hardly we escaped the pride of France." 

Further on (v. 3) she is made to summon fiends before her, 
but she wishes them in vain, for they speak not, hanging 
their heads in sign of approaching disaster: 

"Now help, ye charming spells and periapts; 
And ye choice spirits that admonish me 
And give me signs of future accidents. 
You speedy helpers, that are substitutes 
Under the lordly monarch of the north, 
Appear and aid me in this enterprise." 



But she adds : 



% 



" See, they forsake me ! Now the time is come 
That France must vail her lofty-plumed crest, 
And let her head fall into England's lap. 
My ancient incantations are too weak. 
And hell too strong for me to buckle with : 
Now, France, thy glory droopeth to the dust." 

Finally, convicted of practising sorcery, and filling " the 
^ " Rationalism in Europe," 1870, vol. i. p. 106. 



WITCHES. 27 

world with vicious qualities," she was condemned to be 
burned. Her death, however. Sir Walter Scott' says, "was 
not, we are sorry to say, a sacrifice to superstitious fear of 
witchcraft, but a cruel instance of wicked policy, mingled with 
national jealousy and hatred. The Duke of Bedford, when 
the ill-starred Jeanne fell into his hands, took away her life 
in order to stigmatize her memory with sorcery, and to de- 
stroy the reputation she had acquired among the French." 

The cases of the Duchess of Gloucester and of Jane Shore, 
also immortalized by Shakespeare, are both referred to in 
the succeeding pages. 

The Witch of Brentford, mentioned by Mrs. Page in " The 
Merry Wives of Windsor" (iv. 2), was an actual personage, 
the fame, says Staunton,'' " of whose vaticinations must have 
been traditionally well known to an audience of the time, 
although the records we possess of her are scant enough. 
The chief of them is a black-letter tract, printed by William 
Copland in the middle of the sixteenth century, entitled " Jyl 
of Braintford's Testament," from Avhich it appears she was 
hostess of a tavern at Brentford.^ One of the characters in 
Dekker and Webster's "Westward Ho"* says, "I doubt 
that old hag, Gillian of Brainford, has bewitched mc." 

The witches in "Macbeth" are probably Scottish hags. 
As Mr. Gunnyon remarks," " They are hellish monsters, brew- 
ing hell-broth, having cats and toads for familiars, loving 
midnight, riding on the passing storm, and devising evil 
against such as offend them. They crouch beneath the gib- 
bet of the murderer, meet in gloomy caverns, amid earth- 
quake convulsions, or in thunder, lightning, and rain." Cole- 
ridge, speaking of them, observes that " the weird sisters are 
as true a creation of Shakespeare's as his Ariel and Caliban 
— fates, fairies, and materializing witches being the elements. 
They are wholly different from any representation of witches 

* " Demonology and Witchcraft." 1881, pp. 192, 193. 

' "Shakespeare," 1864, vol. ii. p. 161. 'Sec Dyce's " Glossary," p. 51. 

* Webster's Works, edited by Dycc, 1857, p. 238. 

*" Illustrations of Scottish History, Life, and Superstition," 1879, 
p. 322. 



28 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

in the contemporary writers, and yet presented a sufficient 
external resemblance to the creatures of vulgar prejudice to 
act immediately on the audience. Their character consists 
in the imaginative disconnected from the good, they are the 
shadowy obscure and fearfully anomalous of physical nature, 
elemental avengers without sex or kin." 

It has been urged, however, by certain modern critics, that 
these three sisters, " who play such an important part in 
' Macbeth,' are not witches at all, but are, or are intimately 
allied to, the Norns or Fates of Scandinavian paganism."" 
Thus, a writer in the Academy (Feb. 8, 1879) thinks that 
Shakespeare drew upon Scandinavian mythology for a por- 
tion of the material he used in constructing these characters, 
and that he derived the rest from the traditions of contem- 
porary witchcraft; in fact, that the "sisters" are hybrids 
between Norns and witches. The supposed proof of this is 
that each sister exercises the special function of one of the 
Norns. "The third," it is said, "is the special prophetess, 
while the first takes cognizance of the past, and the second 
of the present, in affairs connected with humanity. These 
are the tasks of Urda, Verdandi, and Skulda. The first be- 
gins by asking, * When shall we three meet again ?' The 
second decides the time : ' When the battle's lost and won.' 
The third the future prophesies: 'That will be ere the set 
of sun.' The first again asks, ' Where ?' The second de- 
cides : * Upon the heath.' The third the future prophesies: 
< There to meet with Macbeth.' " 

It is further added that the description of the sisters given 
by Banquo (i. 3) applies to Norns rather than witches : 

" What are these 
So wither'd and so wild in their attire, 
That look not like the inhabitants o' the earth, 
And yet are on't? Live you? or are you aught 
That man may question ? You seem to understand me, 
By each at once her chappy finger laying 
Upon her skinny lips : you should be women, 
And yet your beards forbid me to interpret 
That you are so." 

' Spalding's " Elizabethan Demonology," 1880, p. 86. 



WITCHES. 29 

But, as Mr. Spalding truly adds, "a more accurate poetical 
counterpart to the prose descriptions given by contemporary 
writers of the appearance of the poor creatures who w^ere 
charged with the crime of witchcraft could hardly have been 
penned." Scot, for instance, in his " Discovery of Witch- 
craft " (book i. chap. iii. 7), says: "They are women which 
commonly be old, lame, bleare-eied, pale, fowle, and full of 
wrinkles ; they are leane and deformed, showing melancholic 
in their faces." Harsnet, too, in his " Declaration of Popish 
Impostures" (1603, p. 136), speaks of a witch as "an old 
weather-beaten crone, having her chin and knees meeting for 
age, walking like a bow, leaning on a staff, hollow-eyed, un- 
toothed, furrowed, having her limbs trembling with palsy, 
going mumbling in the streets; one that hath forgotten her 
paternoster, yet hath a shrewd tongue to call a drab a drab." 

The beard, also, to which Shakespeare refers in the passage 
above, was the recognized characteristic of the witch. Thus, 
in the " Honest Man's Fortune " (ii. i), it is said, " The women 
that come to us for disguises must wear beards, and that's to 
say a token of a witch." In the " Merry Wives of Windsor " 
(iv. 2), Sir Hugh Evans says of the disguised Falstaff: "By 
yea and no, I think the 'oman is a witch indeed : I like not 
when a 'oman has a great peard ; I spy a great peard under 
her muffler." 

It seems probable, then, that witches are alluded to by 
Shakespeare in " Macbeth," the contemporary literature on 
the subject fully supporting this theory. Again, by ^his in- 
troduction of Hecate among the witches in " Macbeth " (iii. 5), 
Shakespeare has been censured for confounding ancient with 
modern superstitions. But the incongruity is found in all 
the poets of the Renaissance. Hecate, of course, is only an- 
other name for Diana. " Witchcraft, in truth, is no modern 
invention. Witches were believed in by the vulgar in the 
time of Horace as implicitly as in the time of Shakespeare. 
And the belief that the pagan gods were really existent as 
evil demons is one which has come down from the very 
earliest ages of Christianity.'". As far back as the fourth 
• " Notes to Macbeth " (Clark and Wright). 1877. p. 137. 



30 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

century, the Council of Ancyra is said to have condemned 
the pretensions of witches ; that in the night-time they rode 
abroad or feasted with their mistress, who was one of the 
pagan goddesses, Minerva, Sibylla, or Diana, or else Hero- 
dias.' In Middleton's " Witch," Hecate is the name of one 
of his witches, and she has a son a low buffoon. In Jonson's 
"Sad Shepherd" (ii. i) Maudlin the witch calls Hecate, the 
mistress of witches, " Our dame Hecate." While speaking 
of the witches in " Macbeth," it may be pointed out that'^ 
" the full meaning of the first scene is the fag-end of a witch's 
Sabbath, which, if fully represented, would bear a strong re- 
semblance to the scene at the commencement of the fourth 
act. But a long scene on such a subject would be tedious 
and uninteresting at the commencement of the play. The 
audience is therefore left to assume that the witches have 
met, performed their conjurations, obtained from the evil 
spirits the information concerning Macbeth's career that they 
desired to obtain, and perhaps have been commanded by the 
fiends to perform the mission they subsequently carry 
through." Brand ' describes this " Sabbath of the witches as 
a meeting to which the sisterhood, after having been anointed 
with certain magical ointments, provided by their infernal 
leader, are supposed to be carried through the air on brooms," 
etc. It was supposed to be held on a Saturday, and in past 
centuries this piece of superstition was most extensively 
credited, and was one of the leading doctrines associated 
with the system of witchcraft. 

Referring, in the next place, to the numerous scattered 
notices of witches given by Shakespeare throughout his 
plays, it is evident that he had made himself thoroughly 
acquainted with the superstitions connected with the sub- 
ject, many of which he has described with the most minute 
accuracy. It appears, then, that although they were sup- 

' Scot's •'Discovery of Witchcraft," 1584, book iii. chap. 16. See 
Douce's " Illustrations of Shakespeare," p. 235. 

^ " EHzabethan Demonology," pp. 102, 103. Sec Conway's " Demon- 
ology and Devil-lore," vol. ii. p. 253. 

' " Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. iii. p. 8, 



WITCHES. 3 J 

posed to possess extraordinary powers, which they exerted 
in various ways, yet these were limited, as in the case of 
Christmas night, when, we are told in " Hamlet " (i, i), " they 
have no power to charm." In spite, too, of their being able 
to assume the form of any animal at pleasure, the tail was 
always wanting. In " Macbeth " (i. 3), the first witch says : 

" And, like a rat without a tail, 
I'll do, I'll do, and I'll do." 

One distinctive mark, also, of a were-wolf, or human being 
changed into a wolf, was the absence of a tail. The cat was 
said to be the form most commonly assumed by the familiar 
spirits of witches ; as, for instance, where the first witch says, 
" I come, Graymalkin !"' (i. i), and further on (iv. i), " Thrice 
the brindcd cat hath mew'd." In German legends and tradi- 
tions we find frequent notice of witches assuming the form 
of a cat, and displaying their fiendish character in certain 
diabolical acts. It was, however, the absence of the tail that 
only too often was the cause of the witch being detected in 
her disguised form. There were various other modes of 
detecting witches: one being "the trial by the stool," to 
which an allusion is made in " Troilus and Cressida" (ii. i), 
where Ajax says to Thersites, 

" Thou stool for a witch !" 

— a practice which is thus explained in Grey's " Notes " (ii. 
236) : " In one way of trying a witch, they used to place her 
upon a chair or a stool, with her legs tied cross, that all the 
weight of her body might rest upon her seat, and by that 
means, after some time, the circulation of the blood would 
be much stopped, and her sitting would be as painful as the 
wooden horse; and she must continue in this pain twent}'- 
four hours, without either sleep or meat ; and it was no 
wonder that, when they were tired out with such an un- 
godly trial, they would confess themselves many times guilty 
to free themselves from such torture." 

Again, it was a part of the system of witchcraft that draw- 

' Graymalkin — a gray cat. 



32 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



ing blood from a witch rendered her enchantments ineffectual. 
Thus, in " i Henry VI." (i. 5), Talbot says to the Maid of 

Orleans : 

" I'll have a bout with thee ; 
Devil or devil's dam, I'll conjure thee : 
Blood will I draw on thee, thou art a witch." 

An instance of this superstition occurred some years ago in 
a Cornish village, when a man was summoned before the 
bench of magistrates and fined, for having assaulted the 
plaintiff and scratched her with a pin. Indeed, this notion 
has by no means died out. As recently as the year 1870, a 
man eighty years of age was fined at Barnstaple, in Devon- 
shire, for scratching with a needle the arm of a young girl. 
He pleaded that he had " suffered affliction " through her for 
five years, had had four complaints on him at once, had lost 
fourteen canaries, and about fifty goldfinches, and that his 
neighbors told him this was the only way to break the spell 
and get out of her power." ' 

It was, also, a popular belief that a great share of faith was 
a protection from witchcraft. Hence, in the " Comedy of 
Errors" (iii. 2), Dromio of Syracuse says of Nell : 

" if my breast had not been made of faith and my heart of steel, 
She had transform'd me to a curtail-dog, and made me turn i' the 
wheel." 

In order, moreover, to check the powder of witches, it was 
supposed to be necessary to propitiate them, a ceremony 
which was often performed. It is alluded to further on in 
the same play (iv. 3), where Dromio of Syracuse says — 

" Some devils ask but the parings of one's nail, 
A rush, a hair, a drop of blood, a pin, 
A nut, a cherry-stone ;" 

and in " Macbeth " we read of their being propitiated by 
gifts of blood. Witches were supposed to have the power of 
creating storms and other atmospheric disturbances — a no- 
tion to which much prominence is given in "Macbeth." 

' Henderson's " Folk- Lore of Northern Counties," p. 181. 



WITCHES. 33 

Thus, the witches elect to meet in thunder, Hghtning, or rain. 
They are represented as being able to loose and bind the 
winds (v. 3), to cause vessels to be tempest-tossed at sea. 
j Hence Macbeth addresses them (iv. i): 

' " Though you untie the winds, and let them fight 

Against the churches ; though the yesty waves 
Confound and swallow navigation up ; 
Though bladed corn be lodged and trees blown down ; 
Though castles topple on their warders' heads ; 
Though palaces and pyramids do slope 
Their heads to their foundations ; though the treasure 
Of nature's germins tumble all together, 
Even till destruction sicken." 

Thus, by way of illustration, we may quote a curious con- 
fession made in Scotland, about the year 1591, by Agnes 
Sampson, a reputed witch. She vowed that " at the time his 
majesty [James VI.] was in Denmark, she took a cat and 
' christened it, and afterwards bound to each part of that cat 
I the chiefest parts of a dead m^viii and several joints of his 
body ; and that in the night following, the said cat was con- 
veyed into the midst of the sea, by herself and other witches, 
sailing in their riddles, or crieves, and so left the said cat 
right before the town of Leith, in Scotland. This done, there 
arose such a tempest in the sea, as a greater hath not been 
seen, which tempest was the cause of the perishing of a boat 
or vessel coming from the town of Brunt Island to the town 
of Leith, wherein were sundry jewels and rich gifts, which 
should have been presented to the new Queen of Scotland 
at his majesty's coming to Leith. Again, it is confessed that 
the said christened cat was the cause of the king's majesty's 
ship, at his coming forth of Denmark, having a contrary 
wind to the rest of the ships then being in his company, 
which thing was most strange and true, as the king's majesty 
acknowledged." It is to this circumstance that Shakespeare 
probably alludes in "Macbeth" (i. 3), where he makes the 
witch say : 

'• Though his bark cannot be lost. 
Yet it shall be tempest-toss'd." 

3 



34 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



1 



Witches were also believed to be able to sell or give winds, 
a notion thus described in Drayton's " Moon-Calf" (865) : 

" She could sell winds to any one that would 
Buy them for money, forcing them to hold 
What time she listed, tie them in a thread, 
Which ever as the seafarer undid 
They rose or scantled, as his sails would drive 
To the same port whereas he would arrive." 

So, in " Macbeth " (i. 3) : 

" 2 Witch. I'll give thee a wind. 
I Witch. Thou'rt kind. 
3 Witch. And I another." 

Singer quotes from Sumner's " Last Will and Testament :" 

" In Ireland, and in Denmark both, 
Witches for gold will sell a man a wind, 
Which, in the corner of a napkin wrapp'd. 
Shall blow him safe unto what coast he will." 

At one time the Finlanders and Laplanders drove a prof- 
itable trade by the sale of winds. After being paid they 
knitted three magical knots, and told the buyer that when 
he untied the first he would have a good gale; when the 
second, a strong wind ; and when the third, a severe tem- 
pest.' 

The sieve, as a symbol of the clouds, has been regarded 
among all nations of the Aryan stock as the mythical vehi- 
cle used by witches, nightmares, and other elfish beings in 
their excursions over land and sea." Thus, the first witch 
in "Macbeth" (i. 3), referring to the scoff which she had 
received from a sailor's wife, says: 

" Her husband's to Aleppo gone, master o' the Tiger : 
But in a sieve I'll thither sail."^ 

' Olaus Magnus's " History of the Goths," 1638, p. 47. See note to 
" The Pirate." 

^ See Hardwick's "Traditions and Folk-Lore," pp. 108, 109; Kelly's 
" Indo-European Folk-Lore," pp. 214, 215. 

" In Greek, kirl pnrovg TrXiiv, " to go to sea in a sieve," was a proverbial 
expression for an enterprise of extreme hazard or impossible of achieve- 
ment. — Clark and Wright's "Notes to Macbeth," 1877, p. 82. 



WITCHES. 



35 



Stories of voyages performed in this way arc common 
enough in, Germany. A man, for instance, going through a 
corn-field, finds a sieve on the path, which he takes with 
him. He does not go far before a young lady hurries after 
him, and hunts up and down as if looking for something, 
ejaculating all the time, " How my children are crying in 
England !" Thereupon the man lays down the sieve, and 
has hardly done so ere sieve and lady vanish. In the case 
of another damsel of the same species, mentioned by Mr. 
Kelly, the usual exclamation is thus varied : " My sieve 
rim ! my sieve rim ! how my mother is calling me in Eng- 
land I" At the sound of her mother's voice the daughter 
immediately thinks of her sieve. Steevens quotes from the 
"Life of Doctor Fian," "a notable sorcerer," burned at Edin- 
burgh, January, 1591, how that he and a number of witches 
went to sea, " each one in a riddle or civcT In the " Dis- 
covery of Witchcraft," Reginald Scot says it was believed 
that "■ witches could sail in an egg-shell, a cockle or muscle- 
shell, through and under the tempestuous seas." Thus, in 
" Pericles " (iv. 4), Gower says : 

" Thus time we waste, and longest leagues make short ; 
Sail seas in cockles, have, and wish but for't." 

Their dance is thus noticed in " Macbeth " (iv. i) : 

" I'll charm the air to give a sound 
While you perform your antic round."' 

Witches also were supposed to have the power of vanish- 
ing at will, a notion referred to in " Macbeth " (i. 3), where, 
in reply to Banquo's inquiry as to whither the witches are 
vanished, Macbeth replies : 

" Into the air ; and what seem'd corporal melted 
As breath into the wind."' 

In his letter to his wife he likewise observes: "They made 
themselves air, into which they vanished." Hecate, in the 
third act, fifth scene, after giving instructions to the weird 

host, says : 

" I am for the air; this night I'll spend 
Unto a dismal and a fatal end." 



36 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



1 



To this purpose they prepared various ointments, concern- 
ing which Reginald Scot ' says : " The devil teacheth them 
to make ointment of the bowels and members of children, 
whereby they ride in the air and accomplish all their desires. 
After burial they steal them out of their graves and seethe 
them in a caldron till the flesh be made potable, of which 
they make an ointment by which they ride in the air." 
Lord Bacon also informs us that the " ointment the witches 
use is reported to be made of the fat of children digged out 
of their graves, of the juices of smallage, wolfbane, and 
cinquefoil, mingled with the meal of fine wheat; but I sup- 
pose the soporiferous medicines are likest to do it, which 
are henbane, hemlock, mandrake, moonshade — or rather 
nightshade — tobacco, opium, saffron,"' etc. These witch 
recipes, which are very numerous, are well illustrated in 
Shakespeare's grim caldron scene, in " Macbeth " (iv. i), 
where the first witch speaks of 

" grease that's sweaten 
From the murderer's gibbet." 

We may compare a similar notion given by Apuleius, who, 
in describing the process used by the witch, Milo's wife, for 
transforming herself into a bird, says: "That she cut the 
lumps of flesh of such as were hanged." ' 

Another way by which witches exercise their power was 
by looking into futurity, as in " Macbeth " (i. 3), where Ban- 
quo says to them : 

" If you can look into the seeds of time, 
And say which grain will grow and which will not, 
Speak then to me." 

Charles Knight, in his biography of Shakespeare, quotes a 
witch trial, which aptly illustrates the passage above ; the 

^ " Discovery of Witchcraft," 1 584, book iii. chap. i. p. 40 ; see Spald- 
ing's " Elizabethan Demonology," p. 103. 

^ See Brand's " Pop. Antiq.," vol. iii. pp. 8-10. 

^ Douce, " Illustrations of Shakespeare," p. 245, says : " See Adling- 
ton's Translation (1596, p. 49). a book certainly used by Shakespeare 
on other occasions." 



WITCHES. ^7 

case being that of Johnnet Wischert, who was " indicted for 
passing to the green-growing corn in May, twenty-two years 
since, or thereby, sitting thereupon tymous in the morning 
before the sun-rising ; and being there found and demanded 
what she was doing, thus answered, I shall tell thee ; I have 
been piling the blades of the corn. I find it will be a dear 
year ; the blade of the corn grows withersones [contrary to 
the course of the sun], and when it grows sonegatis about 
[with the course of the sun], it will be a good, cheap year." 
According to a common notion firmly believed in days 
gone by, witches were supposed to make waxen figures of 
those they intended to harm, which they stuck through with 
pins, or melted before a slow fire. Then, as the figure wast- 
ed, so the person it represented was said to waste away also. 
Thus, in " Macbeth " (i. 3), the first witch says ; 

" Weary sev'n-nights, nine times nine, 
Shall he dwindle, peak, and pine." 

Referring to the histories of the Duchess of Gloucester 
and of Jane Shore, who were accused of practising this mode 
of witchcraft, Shakespeare, in " 2 Henry VI." (i. 2), makes 
the former address Hume thus: 

" What say'st thou, man ? hast thou as yet conferr'd 
With Margery Jourdain, the cunning witch, 
With Roger Bolingbroke, the conjurer? 
And will they undertake to do me good ?" 

She was afterwards, however, accused of consulting witches 
concerning the mode of compassing the death of her hus- 
band's nephew, Henry VI. It was asserted that " there was 
found in the possession of herself and accomplices a waxen 
image of the king, which they melted in a magical manner 
before a slow fire, with the intention of making Henry's 
force and vigor waste away by like insensible degrees." 

A similar charge was brought against Jane Shore, the mis- 
tress of Edward IV., by Richard, Duke of Gloucester. Thus, 
in " King Richard III." (iii. 4), Gloucester asks Hastings: 

" I pray you all, tell mc what they deserve 
That do conspire my death with devilish plots 



38 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

Of damned witchcraft, and that have prevailed 
Upon my body with their helhsh charms ?" 



And he then further adds : 

" Look how I am bewitch'd ; behold mine arm 
Is, hke a blasted sapling, wither'd up: 
And this is Edward's wife, that monstrous witch, 
Consorted with that harlot, strumpet Shore, 
That by their witchcraft thus have marked me." 

This superstition is further alluded to in " King John " 
(v. 4) by Melun, who, wounded, says : 

" Have I not hideous death within my view. 
Retaining but a quantity of life, 
Which bleeds away, even as a form of wax 
Resolveth from his figure 'gainst the fire ?" 

And, again, in " The Two Gentlemen of Verona " (ii. 4), Pro- 
teus says : 

" for now my love is thaw'd ; 
Which, like a waxen image 'gainst a fire. 
Bears no impression of the thing it was." ' 

Images were frequently formed of other materials, and 
maltreated in some form or other, to produce similar results 
— a piece of superstition which still prevails to a great ex- 
tent in the East. Dubois, in his " People of India " (1825), 
speaks of magicians who make small images in mud or clay, 
and then write the names of their animosity on the breasts 
thereof; these are otherwise pierced with thorns or mutilat- 
ed, "so as to communicate a corresponding injury to the 
person represented." They were also said to extract moist- 
ure from the body, as in " Macbeth " (i. 3) : 

" I will drain him dry as hay." 

Referring to the other mischievous acts of witches, Stee- 
vens quotes the following from " A Detection of Damna- 
ble Driftes Practised by Three Witches, etc., arraigned at 
Chelmisforde, in Essex, 1579:" " Item — Also she came on a 
tyme to the house of one Robert Lathburie, who, dislyking 

' See Henderson's " Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties," 1879, p. 181. 



WITCHES. T^g 

her dealyng, sent her home emptie ; but presently after her 
departure his hogges fell sicke and died, to the number of 
tvventie." Hence in " Macbeth " (i. 3) in reply to the inquiry 
of the first witch : 

" Where hast thou been, sister ?" 

the second replies : 

" Killing swine." 

It appears to have been their practice to destroy the cat- 
tle of their neighbors, and the farmers have to this day 
many ceremonies to secure their cows and other cattle from 
witchcraft ; but they seem to have been most suspected of 
malice against swine. Harsnet observes how, formerly, ''A 
sow could not be ill of the measles, nor a girl of the sullens, 
but some old woman was charged with witchcraft." ' 

Mr. Henderson, in his " Folk-Lore of the Northern Coun- 
ties " (1879, P- 18-)' relates how a few years ago a witch died 
in the village of Bovey Tracey, Devonshire. She was ac- 
cused of "overlooking" her neighbors' pigs, so that her 
son, if ever betrayed into a quarrel with her, used always to 
say, before they parted, " Mother, mother, spare my pigs." 

Multiples of three and nine were specially employed by 
witches, ancient and modern. Thus, in " Macbeth " (i. 3), 
the witches take hold of hands and dance round in a ring 
nine times — three rounds for each witch, as a charm for the 
furtherance of her purposes : ^ 

" Thrice to thine and thrice to mine, 
And thrice again, to make up nine. 
Peace ! the charm's wound up." 

The love of witches for odd numbers is further illustrated 
(iv. i), where one of them tells how 

"Thrice and once the hedge-pig whined," 

this being the witches' way of saying four times. 

In Fairfax's " Tasso " (book xiii. stanza 6) it is said that 

"Witchcraft loveth numbers odd." 



' See /'/>, chap. vi. 

= " Notes to Macbeth," by Clark and Wright, 1877, P- S4. 



40 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



This notion is very old, and we may compare the following 
quotations from Ovid's " Metamorphoses" (xiv. 58): 

" Ter novies carmen magico demurmurat ore." 
And, again (vii. 189-191): 

" Ter se convertit ; ter sumtis flumine crinem 
Irroravit aquis ; ternis ululatibus era 
Solvit." 

Vergil, too, in his " Eclogues " (viii. 75)5 says : 

" Numero deus impare gaudet." 

The belief in the luck of odd numbers is noticed by Fal- 
staff in the " Merry Wives of Windsor " (v. i) : 

" They say there is divinity in odd numbers, either in nativity, chance, 
or death !'" 

In ** King Lear " (iv. 2) when the Duke of Albany tells 
Goneril, 

"She that herself will sliver and disbranch 
From her material sap, perforce must wither 
And come to deadly use " — ■ 

he alludes to the use that witches and enchanters were com- 
monly supposed to make of withered branches in their 
charms." 

Among other items of witch-lore mentioned by Shake- 
speare may be noticed the common belief in the intercourse 
between demons and witches, to which Prospero alludes in 
the " Tempest " (i. 2) : 

" Thou poisonous slave, got by the devil himself 
Upon thy wicked dam, come forth !" 

This notion is seriously refuted by Scot in his " Discovery 
of Witchcraft " (book iv.), where he shows it to be " flat 
knavery." 

The offspring of a witch was termed " Hag-seed," and as 
such is spoken of by Prospero in the " Tempest " (i. 2). 

Witches were also in the habit of saying their prayers 



' See Jones's " Credulities, Past and Present," 1880, pp. 256-289. 



WITCHES. 41 

backwards; a practice to which Hero refers in " Much Ado 
About Nothing" (iii. i), where, speaking of Beatrice, she 

says : 

" I never yet saw man. 
How wise, how noble, young, how rarely featured. 
But she would spell him backward." 

FamiHar spirits ' attending on magicians and witches were 
always impatient of confinement.' So in the " Tempest " 
(i. 2) we find an illustration of this notion in the following 
dialogue : 

" Prospero. What is't thou canst demand ? 
Ariel. My liberty. 

Prospa'O. Before the time be out? No more." 

Lastly, the term "Aroint thee" ("Macbeth," i. 3), used 
by the first witch, occurs again in " King Lear " (iii. 4), 
" Aroint thee, witch, aroint thee." That aroint is equivalent 
to " away," " begone," seems to be agreed, though its ety- 
mology is uncertain.^ " Rynt thee " is used by milkmaids 
in Cheshire to a cow, when she has been milked, to bid her 
get out of the way. Ray, in his " Collection of North Coun- 
try Words" (1768, p. 52), gives "Rynt ye, by your leave, 
stand handsomely, as rynt you witch, quoth Bessie Locket 
to her mother. Proverb, Chesh." Some connect it with the 
adverb " aroume," meaning "abroad," found in Chaucer's 
" House of Fame " (book ii. stanza 32) : 

•' That I a-roume was in the field." 

Other derivations are from the \^2iX\\\ ai'crrunco : the Italian 
rogiia, a cutaneous disease, etc. 

How thoroughly Shakespeare was acquainted with the 

' Allusions to this superstition occur in " Love's Labour's Lost " 
(i. 2), "love is a familiar;" in " i Henry VL" (iii. 2), " I think her old 
familiar is asleep ; and in " 2 Henry VL" (iv. 7), " he has a familiar un- 
der his tongue." 

' See Scot's " Discovery of Witchcraft," 1584, p. 85. 

' See Dyce's " Glossary," pp. 18, 19. 



42 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



system of witchcraft is evident from the preceding pages, 
in which we have noticed his allusions to most of the prom- 
inent forms of this species of superstition. Many other 
items of witch-lore, however, are referred to by him, men- 
tion of which is made in succeeding chapters.' 

1 " Notes to Macbeth " (Clark and Wright), pp. 8i, 82. 



CHAPTER III. 

GHOSTS. 

Few subjects have, from time immemorial, possessed a 
wider interest than ghosts, and the superstitions associated 
with them in this and other countries form an extensive 
collection in folk-lore literature. In Shakespeare's day, it 
would seem that the belief in ghosts was specially prevalent, 
and ghost tales were told by the firelight in nearly every 
household. The young, as Mr. Goadby, in his " England of 
Shakespeare," says (1881, p. 196)," were thus touched by the 
prevailing superstitions in their most impressionable years. 
They looked for the incorporeal creatures of whom they 
had heard, and they were quick to invest any trick of moon- 
beam shadow with the attributes of the supernatural." A 
description of one of these tale -tellings is given in the 
"Winter's Tale" (ii. i): 

''Her. What wisdom stirs amongst you ? Come, sir, now 
I am for you again : pray you. sit by us. 
And tells a tale. 

Mam. Merry or sad shall't be ? 

Her. As merry as you will. 

Mam. A sad tale's best for winter : 

I have one of sprites and goblins. 

Her. Let's have that, good sir. 

Come on, sit down : Come on, and do your best 
To fright me with your sprites : you're powerful at it. 

Mam. There was a man, — 

Her. Nay, come, sit down ; then on. 

Mam. Dwelt by a churchyard : I will tell it softly; 
Yond crickets shall not hear it. 

Her. Come on, then. 

And give't me in mine ear." 

The important part which Shakespeare has assigned to 
the ghost in " Hamlet " has a special value, inasmuch as it 



44 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



illustrates many of the old beliefs current in his day respect- 
ing their history and habits. Thus, according to a popular 
notion, ghosts are generally supposed to assume the exact 
appearance by which they were usually known when in the 
material state, even to the smallest detail of their dress. So 
Horatio tells Hamlet how, when Marcellus and Bernardo 
were on their watch (i. 2), 

"A figure like your father, 
Arm'd at point, exactly, cap-a-pe, 
Appears before them, and with solemn march 
Goes slow and stately by them." 

Further on, when the ghost appears again, Hamlet address- 
es it thus : 

"What may this mean. 
That thou, dead corse, again, in complete steel, 
Revisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon, 
Making night hideous." 

In the graphic description of Banquo's ghost in " Mac- 
beth " (iii. 4), we have a further allusion to the same belief; 
one, indeed, which is retained at the present day with as 
much faith as in days of old. 

Shakespeare has several allusions to the notion which pre- 
vailed in days gone by, of certain persons being able to ex- 
orcise or raise spirits. Thus, in " Cymbeline " (iv. 2), Guide- 
rius says over Fidele's grave : 

" No exorciser harm thee." 

In "Julius Caesar" (ii. i), Ligarius says: 

" Soul of Rome ! 
Brave son, derived from honourable loins ! 
Thou, like an exorcist, hast conjured up 
My mortified spirit. Now bid me run, 
And I will strive with things impossible ; 
Yea, get the better of them." 

In "All's Well that Ends Well " (v. 3) the king says: 

" Is there no exorcist 
Beguiles the truer office of mine eyes } 
Is't real that I see ?" 



GHOSTS. 



45 



This superstition, it may be added, has of late years gained 
additional notoriety since the so-called spiritualism has at- 
tracted the attention and support of the credulous. As 
learning Avas considered necessary for an exorcist, the school- 
master was often employed. Thus, in the " Comedy of Er- 
rors " (iv. 4), the schoolmaster Pinch is introduced in this 
capacity. 

Within, indeed, the last fifty years the pedagogue Avas still ! 
a reputed conjurer. In " Hamlet " (i. i), Marcellus, alluding 
to the ghost, says : 

" Thou art a scholar ; speak to it, Horatio." 

And in " Much Ado About Nothing" (ii. i). Benedick says: 

" I would to God some scholar would conjure her." 

For the same reason exorcisms were usually practised by 
the clergy in Latin ; and so Toby, in the " Night Walker" 
of Beaumont and Fletcher (ii. i), says: 

" Let's call the butler up, for he speaks Latin, 
And that will daunt the devil." 

It was also necessary that spirits, when evoked, should be 
questioned quickly, as they were supposed to be impatient 
of being interrogated. Hence in " Macbeth " (iv. i) the ap- 
parition says : 

" Dismiss me. Enough I" 

The spirit, likewise, in " 2 Henry VI." (i. 4) utters these 
words : 

" Ask what thou wilt. That I had said and done !" 

Spirits were supposed to maintain an obdurate silence till 
interrogated by the persons to whom they made their spe- 
cial appearance.' Thus Hamlet, alluding to the appearance 
of the ghost, asks Horatio (i. 2) : 

" Did you not speak to it?" 

' We may compare the words "unquestionable spirit" in "As You 
Like It" (iii. 2), which means "a spirit averse to conversation." 



46 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

Whereupon he rephes : 

" My lord, I did ; 
But answer made it none : yet once, methought 
It lifted up its head and did address 
Itself to motion, like as it would speak." 

The walkmg of sph-its seems also to have been enjoined 
by way of penance. The ghost of Hamlet's father (i. 5) 

says: 

" I am thy father's spirit, 
Doom'd for a certain term to walk the night. 
And for the day confin'd to fast in fires, 
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature 
Are burnt and purg'd away." 

And further on (iii. 2) Hamlet exclaims : 

" It is a damned ghost that we have seen." 

This superstition is referred to by Spenser in his " Fairy 
Queen " (book i. canto 2) : 

" What voice of damned ghost from Limbo lake 
Or guileful spright wand'ring in empty ayre, 
Sends to my doubtful eares these speeches rare ?" 

According to a universal belief prevalent from the earliest 
times, it was supposed that ghosts had some particular rea- 
son for quitting the mansions of the dead, " such as a desire 
that their bodies, if unburied, should receive Christian rites 
of sepulture, that a murderer might be brought to due pun- 
ishment," etc' On this account Horatio (" Hamlet," i. i) 
invokes the ghost : 

" If there be any good thing to be done. 
That may to thee do ease and grace to me, 
Speak to me." 

And in a later scene (i. 4) Hamlet says: 

" Say, why is this ? wherefore ? What should we do ?" 

The Greeks believed that such as had not received funeral 
rites would be excluded from Elysium ; and thus the wan- 

' Douce's " Illustrations of Shakespeare," pp. 450, 451. 



GHOSTS. 



47 



dering shade of Patroclus appears to Achilles in his sleep, 
and demands the performance of his funeral. The younger 
Pliny tells a story of a haunted house at Athens, in which a 
ghost played all kinds of pranks, owing to his funeral rites 
having been neglected. A further reference to the super- 
stition occurs in " Titus Andronicus " (i. i), where Lucius, 
speaking of the unburied sons of Titus, says : 

" Give us the proudest prisoner of the Goths, 
That we may hew his limbs, and, on a pile, 
Ad viancs fratrinn sacrifice his flesh. 
Before this earthy prison of their bones ; 
That so the shadows be not unappeased, 
Nor we disturbed with prodigies on earth." 

In olden times, spirits were said to have different allot- 
ments of time, suitable to the variety and nature of their 
agency. Prospero, in the " Tempest " (i. 2), says to Caliban : 

" Be sure, to-night thou shalt have cramps. 
Side-stitches that shall pen thy breath up ; urchins 
Shall, for that vast ' of night that they may work, 
All exercise on thee." 

According to a popular notion, the presence of unearthly 
beings was announced by an alteration in the tint of the 
lights which happened to be burning — a superstition alluded 
to in " Richard III." (v. 3), where the tyrant exclaims, as he 
awakens : 

" The lights burn blue. — It is now dead midnight. 
Cold fearful drops stand on my trembling flesh — 

* :i= * :•,: * 

Methought the souls of all that I had murder'd 
Came to my tent." 

So in "Julius Caesar" (iv. 3), Brutus, on seeing the ghost 
of Caesar, exclaims : 

" How ill this taper burns ! Ha .' who comes here .-*" 

. It has been a wide-spread belief from the most remote 



Vast, /. c, space of night. So in " Hamlet" (i. 2) : 
" In the dead waste and middle of the night." 



48 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

period that ghosts cannot bear the Hght, and so disappear 
at the dawn of day; their signal being the cock-crow.' The 
ghost of Hamlet's father says (i. 5) : 

" But, soft ! methinks I scent the morning air; 
Brief let me be " — 
and — 

" Fare thee well at once. 
The glow-worm shows the matin to be near, 
And 'gins to pale his uneffectual fire : 
Adieu, adieu ! Hamlet, remember me." 

Again, in "King Lear" (iii. 4), Edgar says: "This is the 
foul fiend Flibbertigibbet : he begins at curfew^ and walks 
till the first cock." 

The time of night, as the season wherein spirits wander 
abroad, is further noticed by Gardiner in " Henry VHI." 

(v. I): 

" Afifairs, that walk. 
As they say spirits do, at midnight." 

It was a prevalent notion that a person who. crossed the 
spot on which a spectre was seen became subject to its ma- 
lignant influence. In " Hamlet " (i. i), Horatio says, in ref- 
erence to the ghost : 

" But soft, behold ! lo, where it comes again ! 
I'll cross it, though it blast me." 

Lodge, in his " Illustrations of British History" (iii. 48), 
tells us that among the reasons for supposing the death of 
Ferdinand, Earl of Derby (who died young, in 1594), to have 
been occasioned by witchcraft, was the following: "On Fri- 
day there appeared a tall man, who twice crossed him swift- 
ly ; and when the earl came to the place where he saw this 
man, he fell sick." 

Reginald Scot, in his "Discovery of Witchcraft " (1584), 
enumerates the different kinds of spirits, and particularly 
notices white, black, gray, and red spirits. " So in " Mac- 
beth " (iv. i), "black spirits" are mentioned — the charm 

' See p. 104. 



GHOSTS. 40 

song referred to (like the one in act iv.) being found in Mid- 
dleton's " Witch " (v. 2) : 

" Black spirits and white, 
Red spirits and gray ; 
Mingle, mingle, mingle, 
You that mingle may." 

A well-known superstition which still prevails in this and 
foreign countries is that of the " spectre huntsman and his 
furious host." As night-time approaches, it is supposed that 
this invisible personage rides through the air with his yelp- 
ing hounds ; their weird sound being thought to forbode 
misfortune of some kind. This popular piece of folk-lore 
exists in the north of England under a variety of forms 
among our peasantry, who tenaciously -cling to the tradi- 
tions which have been handed down to them.' It has been 
suggested that Shakespeare had some of these superstitions 
in view when he placed in the mouth of Macbeth (i. 7), 
v.'hile contemplating the murder of Duncan, the following 
metaphors : 

" And pity, like a naked new-born babe, 
Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, horsed 
Upon the sightless couriers of the air, 
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye, 
That tears shall drown the wind !" 

Again, in " The Tempest " (iv. i), Prospero and Ariel are 
represented as setting on spirits, in the shape of hounds, to 
hunt Stcphano and Trinculo. This species of diabolical or 
spectral chase was formerly a popular article of belief. As 
Drake aptly remarks,^ "the hell-hounds of Shakespeare ap- 
pear to be sufficiently formidable, for, not merely commis- 
sioned to hunt their victims, they are ordered, likewise, as 

goblins," to — 

"grind their joints 
With dry convulsions ; shorten up their sinews 

' See Hardwick's "Traditions. Superstitions, and Folk-lore," 1872, 
pp. 153-176. 
^ " Shakespeare and His Times," vol. i. p. 378. 

4 



50 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

With aged cramps ; and more pinch-spotted make them 
Than pard or cat o' mountain. 

Ariel. Hark, they roar ! 

Prospero. Let them be hunted soundly." 



TRANSMIGRATION OF SOULS. 

Shakespeare has several references to the old superstitious 
belief in the transmigration of souls, traces of which may 
still be found in the reverence paid to the robin, the wren, 
and other birds. Thus, in "The Merchant of Venice" (iv. i), 
Gratiano says to Shylock : 

" Thou almost makest me waver in my faith 
To hold opinion with Pythagoras 
That souls of animals infuse themselves 
Into the trunks of men : thy currish spirit 
Govern'd a wolf, who, hang'd for human slaughter. 
Even from the gallows did his fell soul fleet, 
And, whilst thou lay'st in thy unhallow'd dam. 
Infused itself in thee ; for thy desires 
Are wolfish, bloody, starved, and ravenous." 

Caliban, when remonstrating with the drunken Stephano 
and Trinculo, for delaying at the mouth of the cave of Pros- 
pero, instead of taking the magician's life (" Tempest," iv. i), 
says : 

" I will have none on't : we shall lose our time. 
And all be turn'd to barnacles, or to apes.*' 

In " Hamlet " (iv. 5), in the scene where Ophelia, in her 
mental aberration, quotes snatches of old ballads, she says : 
" They say the owl was a baker's daughter ! Lord, we know 
what we are, but know not what we may be." ' 

Again, in " Twelfth Night " (iv. 2), there is another refer- 
ence in the amusing passage where the clown, under the 
pretence of his being " Sir Topas, the curate," questions 
Malvolio, when confined in a dark room, as a presumed 
lunatic : 



See Owl, chap. vi. 



GHOSTS. 



51 



"Mai. I am no more mad than ) ou are : make the trial of it in any 
constant question. 

Clo. What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning wild fowl ? 

Mai. That the soul of our grandam might haply inhabit a bird. 

Clo. What thinkest thou of his opinion ? 

Mai. I think nobly of the soul, and no way approve his opinion. 

Clo. Fare thee well. Remain thou still in darkness : thou shalt hold 
the opinion of Pythagoras ere I will allow of thy wits, and fear to 
kill a woodcock lest thou dispossess the soul of thy grandam." 

Although this primitive superstition is ahnost effete 
among civih'zed nations, yet it still retains an important 
place in the religious beliefs of savage and uncivilized com- 
munities. 



CHAPTER IV. 

DEMONOLOGY AND DEVIL-LORE. 

The state of popular feeling in past centuries with regard 
to the active agency of devils has been well represented by 
Reginald Scot, who, in his work on Witchcraft, has shown 
how the superstitious belief in demonology was part of the 
great system of witchcraft. Many of the popular delusions 
of this terrible form of superstition have been in a masterly 
manner exposed by Shakespeare ; and the scattered allu- 
sions which he has given, illustrative of it, are indeed sufficient 
to prove, if it were necessary, what a highly elaborate creed 
it was. Happily, Shakespeare, like the other dramatists of 
the period, has generally treated the subject with ridicule, 
showing that he had no sympathy with the grosser opinions 
shared by various classes in those times, whether held by 
king or clown. According to an old belief, still firmly cred- 
ited in the poet's day, it was supposed that devils could at 
any moment assume whatever form they pleased that would 
most conduce to the success of any contemplated enterprise 
they might have in hand ; and hence the charge of being a 
devil, so commonly brought against innocent and harmless 
persons in former years, can easily be understood. Among 
the incidental allusions to this notion, given by Shakespeare, 
Prince Hal (" i Henry IV.," ii. 4) tells Falstaff '' there is a 
devil haunts thee in the likeness of an old fat man ;" " an 
old white-bearded Satan." In the " Merchant of Venice " 
(iii. i) Salanio, on the approach of Shylock, says: " Let me 
say ' amen ' betimes, lest the devil cross my prayer, for here 
he comes in the likeness of a Jew." 

Indeed, " all shapes that man goes up and down in " seem 
to have been at the devil's control, a belief referred to in 
" Timon of Athens " (ii. 2) : 



DEMONOLOGY AND DEVIL-LORE. 



53 



" Var. Serv. What is a whoremaster, fool ? 

Fool. A fool in good clothes, and something like thee. 'Tis a 
spirit: sometime 't appears like a lord; sometime like a lawyer; 
sometime like a philosopher, with two stones moe than's artificial 
one : he is very often like a knight ; and, generally, in all shapes that 
man goes up and down in from fourscore to thirteen, this spirit walks 
in." 

A popular form assumed by ev^il spirits was that of a ne- 
gro or Moor, to which lago alludes when he incites Braban- 
tio to search for his daughter, in " Othello " (i. i) : 

" Zounds, sir, you are robb'd ; for shame, put on your gown ; 
Your heart is burst, you have lost half your soul ; 
Even now, now, very now, an old black ram 
Is tupping your white ewe. ^^rise, arise ! 
Awake the snorting citizens with the bell, 
Or else the devil will make a grandsire of you. 
Arise, I say." 

On the other hand, so diverse were the forms which dev- 
ils were supposed to assume that they are said occasionally 
to appear in the fairest form, even in that of a girl (ii. 3) : 

" When devils will the blackest sins put on, 
They do suggest at first with heavenly shows." 

So in " The Comedy of Errors " (iv. 3) we have the follow- 
ing dialogue : 

"Ant. S. Satan, avoid ! I charge thee, tempt me not I 

Dro. S. Master, is this mistress Satan } 

Ant. S. It is the devil. 

Dro. S. Nay, she is worse, she is the devil's dam ; and here she 
comes in the habit of a light wench /and thereof comes that the 
wenches say, ' God damn me ;' that's as much as to say, ' God make me 
a light wench.' It is written, they appear to men like angels of light." 

(Cf also " Love's Labour's Lost," iv, 3.) In " King John " 
(iii. i) even the fair Blanch seemed to Constance none other 
than the devil tempting Lewis " in likeness of a new un- 
trimmed bride." 

Not only, too, were devils thought to assume any human 
shape they fancied, but, as Mr. Spalding remarks,' " the forms 

' " Elizabethan Demonology," p. 49. 



54 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

of the whole of the animal kingdom appear to have been at 
their disposal ; and, not content with these, they seem to 
have sought for unlikely shapes to appear in" — the same 
characteristic belonging also to the fairy tribe. 

Thus, when Edgar is trying to persuade the blind Glouces- 
ter that he has in reality cast himself over the cliff, he de- 
scribes the being from whom he is supposed to have just 
departed : 

" As I stood here below, methought his eyes 
Were two full moons ; he had a thousand noses. 
Horns whelk'd and wav'd like the enridged sea : 
It was some fiend." 

Again, Edgar says ("King Lear," iii. 6): "The foul fiend 
haunts poor Tom in the voice of a nightingale " — the allu- 
sion probably being to the following incident related by 
Friswood Williams: " There was also another strange thing 
happened at Denham about a bird. Mistris Peckham had 
a nightingale which she kept in a cage, wherein Maister Dib- 
dale took great delight, and would often be playing with it. 
The nightingale was one night conveyed out of the cage, 
and being next morning diligently sought for, could not be 
heard of, till Maister Mainie's devil, in one of his fits (as it 
was pretended), said that the wicked spirit which was in this 
examinate's sister had taken the bird out of the cage and 
killed it in despite of Maister Dibdale." ' 

Even the shape of a fly was a favorite one with evil spir- 
its, so much so, that the term-*' fly " was a popular synonym 
for a familiar. In " Titus Andronicus " (iii. 2) there is an 
allusion to this belief, where Marcus, being rebuked by Titus 
for having killed a fly, gives as his reason : 

" It was a black ill-favour'd fly, 
Like to the empress' Moor : therefore I kill'd him." 

Mr. Spalding gives the following illustrations of the super- 
stition : " At the execution of Urban Grandier, the famous 
magician of London, in 1634, a large fly was seen buzzing 

' Harsnet's " Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures," p. 225. 



DEMONOLOGY AND DEVIL- LORE. 

about the stake ; and a priest promptly seizing the oppor- 
tunity of improving the occasion for the benefit of the on- 
lookers, declared that Beelzebub had come in his own proper 
person to carry offGrandier's soul to hell. In 1664 occurred 
the celebrated witch trials which took place before Sir ]\Iat- 
thew Hale. The accused were charged with bewitching two 
children, and part of the evidence against them was that 
flies and bees were seen to carry into their victims' mouths 
the nails and pins which they afterwards vomited." 

Once more, another form devils assumed was that of a 
dead friend. Thus " Hamlet " (i. 4), when he confronts the 
apparition, exclaims : 

"Angels and ministers of grace defend us ! 
Be thou a spirit of health, or goblin damn'd, 
Bring with thee airs from heaven, or blasts from hell. 
Be thy intents wicked, or charitable, 
Thou com'st in such a questionable shape 
That I will speak to thee " — 

for, as Mr. Spalding remarks, " it cannot be imagined that 
Hamlet imagined that a ' goblin damned ' could actually be 
the spirit of his dead father ; and, therefore, the alternative 
in his mind must be that he saw a devil assuming his father's 
likeness— a form which the Evil One knew would most in- 
cite Hamlet to intercourse." 

The same idea seems present in Horatio's mind : 

"What, if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord, 
Or to the dreadful summit of the cliff. 
That beetles o'er his base into the sea, 
And there assume some other horrible form. 
Which might deprive your sovereignty of reason, 
And draw you into madness ?" 

Once more, in the next act (ii. 2), Hamlet again expresses '. 
his doubts : 

"The spirit that I have seen 
May be the devil : and the devil hath power 
To assume a pleasing shape ; yea, and, perhaps. 
Out of my weakness and my melancholy, 
As he is very potent with such spirits. 
Abuses me to damn me." 



56 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

In the Elizabethan times, too, no superstitious belief ex- 
erted a more pernicious and baneful influence on the credu- 
lous and ignorant than the notion that evil spirits from time 
to time entered into human beings, and so completely gained 
a despotic control over them as to render them perfectly 
helpless. Harsnet, in his " Declaration of Egregious Popish 
Impostures" (1603), has exposed this gross superstition; 
and a comparison of the passages in " King Lear," spoken 
by Edgar when. feigning madness, with those given by Hars- 
net, will show that Shakespeare has accurately given the 
contemporary belief on the subject. Mr. Spalding also con- 
siders that nearly all the allusions in " King Lear " refer to 
a youth known as Richard Mainey, a minute account of 
whose supposed possession has been given by Harsnet. 

Persons so possessed were often bound and shut up in a 
dark room, occasionally being forced to submit to flagella- 
tion — a treatment not unlike that described in " Romeo 
and Juliet " (i. 2) : 

" Not mad, but bound more than a madman is ; 
Shut up in prison, kept without my food, 
Whipp'd and tormented." 

In the "Comedy of Errors" (iv. 4) we have an amusing 
scene, further illustrative, probably, of the kind of treatment 
adopted in Shakespeare's day : 

" Courtesan. How say you now ? is not your husband mad ? 
' Adrtana. His incivihty confirms no less — 

Good doctor Pinch, you are a conjurer ; 

EstabHsh him in his true sense again. 

And I will please you what you will demand. 

Luciana. Alas, how fiery and how sharp he looks ! 

Courtesan. Mark how he trembles in his ecstasy ! 

PiticJi. Give me your hand, and let me feel your pulse. 

Ant. E. There is my hand, and let it feel your ear. 

Pinch. I charg^ thee, Satan, hous'd within this man, 

To yield possession to my holy prayers. 
And to thy state of darkness hie thee straight : 
I conjure thee by all the saints in heaven." 

Pinch further says : 

" They must be bound, and laid in some dark room." 



DEMONOLOGY AND DEVIL-LORE. 57 

As Brand remarks/ there is no vulgar story of the devil's 
having appeared anywhere without a cloven foot. In graphic 
representations he is seldom or never pictured without one. 
In the following passage, where Othello is questioning wheth- 
er lago is a devil or not, he says (v. 2) : 

" I look down towards his feet ; — but that's a fable. — 
If that thou be'st a devil, I cannot kill thee." 

Dr. Johnson gives this explanation : " I look towards his 
feet to see if, according to the common opinion, his feet be 
cloven." 

In Massinger's " Virgin Martyr " (iii. 3), Harpax, an evil 
spirit, following Thcophilus in the shape of a secretary, 
speaks thus of the superstitious Christian's description of 
his infernal enemy : 

" I'll tell you what now of the devil : 
He's no such horrid creature ; cloven-footed, 
Black, saucer-ey'd, his nostrils breathing fire. 
As these lying Christians make him." 



GOOD AND EVIL DEMONS. 

It was formerly commonly believed that not only king- 
doms had their tutelary guardians, but that every person 
had his particular genius or good angel, to protect and ad- 
monish him by dreams, visions, etc.^ Hence, in "Antony 
and Cleopatra" (ii. 3), the soothsayer, speaking of Cae.sar, 

says : 

" O Antony, stay not by his side : 
Thy demon, — that's thy spirit which keeps thee, — is 
Noble, courageous, high, unmatchable. 
Where Caesar's is not ; but, near him, thy angel 
Becomes a fear, as being o'erpower'd." 

Thus Macbeth (iii. i) speaks in a similar manner in ref- 
erence to Banquo : 

' "Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. ii. pp. 517-519, 
' Ibid. vol. i. pp. 365-367. 



e3 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

" There is none but he 
__ Whose being I do fear; and, under him, 

My Genius is rebuked ; as, it is said, 
Mark Antony's was by Caesar." 

y So, too, in " 2 Henry IV." (i. 2), the Chief-justice says: 

" You follow the young prince up and down, like his ill angel." 

We may quote a further reference in "JuHus Caesar" 
(iii. 2), where Antony says : 

" For Brutus, as you know, was Csesar's angel." 

" In the Roman world," says Mr. Tylor, in his " Primitive 
Culture" (1873, vol. ii. p. 202), " each man had his ''genius 
natalis,' associated with him from birth to death, influencing 
his action and his fate, standing represented by its proper 
image, as a lar among the household gods and at weddings 
and joyous times, and especially on the anniversary of the 
birthday when genius and man began their united career, 
worship was paid with song and dance to the divine image, 
adorned with garlands, and propitiated with incense and 
libations of wine. The demon or genius was, as it were, the 
man's companion soul, a second spiritual Ego. The Egyp- 
tian astrologer warned Antonius to keep far from the young 
Octavius, ' For thy demon,' said he, ' is in fear of his.' " 

The allusion by Lady Macbeth (i. 5), in the following pas- 
sage, is to the spirits of Revenge : , 

" Come, you spirits 
• That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here. 
And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full 
, Of direst cruelty !" 

In Nash's " Pierce Pennilesse " we find a description of 
these spirits and of their office. " The second kind of dev- 
ils which he most employeth are those northern Martii, 
called the Spirits of Revenge, and the authors of massacres 
and seed-men of mischief; for they have commission to in- 
cense men to rapine, sacrilege, theft, murder, wrath, fury, 
and all manner of cruelties ; and they command certain of 
the southern spirits to wait upon them, as also great Arioch, 



DEMONOLOGY AND DEVIL-LORE. 50 

that is termed the Spirit of Revenge." In another passage 
we are further told how " the spirits of the aire will mixe 
themselves with thunder and lightning, and so infect the 
clime where they raise any tempest, that suddenly great 
mortalitie shall ensue of the inhabitants." " Aerial spirits 
or devils," according to Burton's " Anatomy of Melancholy," 
" are such as keep quarter most part in the aire, cause many 
tempests, thunder and lightnings, tear oakes, fire steeples, 
houses, strike men and beasts," etc. Thus, in " King John " 
(iii. 2), the Bastard remarks : 

" Now, by my life, this clay grows wondrous hot ; 
Some airy devil hovers in the sky. 
And pours down mischief." 

It was anciently supposed that all mines of gold, etc., were 
guarded by evil spirits. Thus Falstaff, in " 2 Henry IV." 
(iv. 3), speaks of learning as " a mere hoard of gold kept by a 
devil." This superstition still prevails, and has been made 
the subject of many a legend. Thus, it is believed by the 
peasantry living near Largo-Law, Scotland, that a rich mine 
of gold is concealed in the mountain. "A spectre once ap- 
peared there, supposed to be the guardian of the mine, who, 
being accosted by a neighboring shepherd, promised to tell 
him at a certain time and on certain conditions, where ' the 
gowd mine is in Largo-Law,' especially enjoining that the 
horn sounded for the housing of the cows at the adjoining 
farm of Balmain should not blow. Every precaution hav- 
ing been taken, the ghost was true to his tryst ; but, unhap- 
pily, when he was about to divulge the desired secret, Tam- 
mie Norrie, the cowherd of Balmain, blew a blast, whereupon 
the ghost vanished, with the denunciation : 

' Woe to the man that blew the horn, 
For out of the spot he shall ne'er be borne.' 

The unlucky horn-blower was struck dead, and, as it was 
found impossible to remove the body, a cairn of stones was 
raised over it." ' 



' See Jones's " Credulities, Past and Present," 1880, p. 133. 



6o FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

Steevens considers that when Macbeth (iii. 2) says : 

" Good things of day begin to droop and drowse ; 
Whiles night's black agents to their preys do rouse," 

he refers to those demons who were supposed to remain in 
their several places of confinement all day, but at the close 
of it were released ; such, indeed, as are mentioned in " The 
Tempest " (v. i), as rejoicing " to hear the solemn curfew," 
because it announced the hour of their freedom. 

Among other superstitions we may quote one in the 
"Merchant of Venice" (iii. i), where Salanio says: "Let 
me say ' amen ' betimes, lest the devil cross my prayer." 

Of the devils mentioned by Shakespeare may be noted 
the following: 

Amawion is one of the chief, whose dominion is on the 
north side of the infernal gulf. He might be bound or re- 
strained from doing hurt from the third hour till noon, and 
from the ninth hour till evening. In the " Merry Wives of 
Windsor" (ii. 2) Ford mentions this devil, and in " 1 Henry 
IV." (ii. 4) Falstaff says: " That same mad fellow of the north 
Percy; and he of Wales, that gave Amaimon the bastinado' 
and made Lucifer cuckold." ' 

The north was always supposed to be the particular habi- 
tation of bad spirits. Milton, therefore, assembles the rebel 
angels in the north. In " i Henry VI." (v. 3), La Pucelle 
invokes the aid of the spirits : 

"Under the lordly monarch of the north." 

Barbason. This demon would seem to be the same as 
" Marbas, alias Barbas," who, as Scot^ informs us, " is a great 
president, and appeareth in the forme of a mightie lion T but 
at the commandment of a conjurer cometh up in the likeness 
of man, and answereth fullie as touching anything which is 
hidden or secret." In the " Merry Wives of Windsor" (ii 2) 
It IS mentioned by Ford in connection with Lucifer, and 



' See Scot's "Discovery of Witchcraft," 1584, p. 393- Donee's "II 
lustrations of Shakespeare," p. 264. 2 J5jj g 



DEMONOLOGY AND DEVIL-LORE. 6l 

again in " Henry V." (ii. i) Nym tells Pistol : " I am not 
Barbason ; you cannot conjure me." 

The names of the several fiends in " King Lear," Shake- 
speare is supposed to have derived from Harsnet's " Declara- 
tion of Egregious Popish Impostures" (1603). 

Flibbertigibbet, one of the fiends that possessed poor Tom, 
is, we are told (iv. i), the fiend " of mopping and mowing, 
who since possesses chambermaids and waiting-women." 
And again (iii. 4), " he begins at curfew, and walks till the 
first cock ; he gives the web and the pin." 

Frateretto is referred to by Edgar (iii. 6): " Frateretto 
calls mc ; and tells me, Nero is an angler in the lake of 
darkness. Pray, innocent, and beware the foul fiend." 

Hobbidielance is noticed as "prince of dumbness" (iv. i), 
and perhaps is the same as Hopdance (iii. 6), " who cries," 
says Edgar, " in Tom's belly for two white herring." 

Ma/m, like Modo, would seem to be another name for " the 
prince of darkness " (iii. 4), and further on (iv. i) he is spoken 
of as the fiend '' of stealing ;" whereas the latter is described 
as the fiend " of murder." Harsnet thus speaks of them : 
" Maho was general dictator of hell ; and yet, for good man- 
ners' sake, he was contented of his good nature to make 
show, that himself was under the check of Modu, the graund 
devil in Ma(ister) Maynie." 

Obidieut, another name of the fiend known as Haberdicut 
(iv. I). 

Suiulkin (iii. 4). This is spelled Smolkin by Harsnet. 

Thus, in a masterly manner, Shakespeare has illustrated 
and embellished his plays with references to the demonology 
of the period ; having been careful in every case — while en- 
livening his audience — to convince them of the utter ab- 
surdity of this degraded form of superstition. 



CHAPTER V. 

NATURAL PHENOMENA. 

Many of the most beautiful and graphic passages in 
Shakespeare's writings have pictured the sun in highly glow- 
ing language, and often invested it with that sweet pathos 
for which the poet was so signally famous. Expressions, 
for instance, such as the following, are ever frequent : " the 
glorious sun" ("Twelfth Night," iv. 3) ; "heaven's glorious 
sun" (" Love's Labour's Lost," i. i); "gorgeous as the sun 
at midsummer" (" i Henry IV.," iv, i) ; "all the world is 
cheered by the sun " (" Richard HL," i. 2) ; " the sacred ra- 
diance of the sun" ("King Lear," i. i); "sweet tidings of 
the sun's uprise" ("Titus Andronicus," iii. i), etc. Then, 
again, how often we come across passages replete with 
pathos, such as " thy sun sets weeping in the lowly west" 
("Richard H.," ii. 4),; "ere the weary sun set in the west" 
("Comedy of Errors," i. 2); "the weary sun hath made a 
golden set" (" Richard HL," v. 3); " The sun, for sorrow, will 
not show his head" ("Romeo and Juliet," v. 3), etc. Al- 
though, however, Shakespeare has made such constant men- 
tion of the sun, yet his allusions to the folk-lore connected 
with it are somewhat scanty. 

According to the old philosophy the sun was accounted 
a planet,' and thought to be whirled round the earth by the 
motion of a solid sphere, in which it was fixed. In " Antony 
and Cleopatra" (iv. 13), Cleopatra exclaims: 

" O sun, 
Burn the great sphere thou mov'st in ! darkhng stand 
The varying shore o' the world." 

Supposing this sphere consumed, the sun must wander in 



^ Singer's " Shakespeare," vol. x. p. 292. 



i 



NATURAL PHENOMENA. go 

endless space, and, as a natural consequence, the earth be 
involved in endless night. 

In " I Henry IV." (i. 2), Falstaff, according to vulgar as- 
tronomy, calls the sun a "wandering knight," and by this 
expression evidently alludes to some knight of romance. 
Mr. Douce' considered the allusion was to "The Voyage of 
the Wandering Knight," by Jean de Cathenay, of which the 
translation, by W. Goodyeare, appeared about the year 1600. 
The words may be a portion of some forgotten ballad. 

A pretty fancy is referred to in " Romeo and Juliet" (iii. 5), 
where Capulet says: 

" When the sun sets, the air doth drizzle dew; 
But for the sunset of my brother's son 
It rains downright." 

And so, too, in the " Rape of Lucrece :" 

" But as the earth doth weep, the sun being set." 

" That Shakespeare thought it was the air," says Singer,' 
"and not the earth, that drizzled dew, is evident from many 
passages in his works. Thus, in ' King John' (ii. i) he says: 
' Before the dew of evening fall.' " Steevens, alluding to the 
following passage in " A Midsummer-Night's Dream" (iii. i), 
" and when she [/. c, the moon] weeps, weeps every little 
flower," says that Shakespeare "means that every little 
flower is moistened with dew, as if with tears ; and not that 
the flower itself drizzles dew." 

By a popular fancy, the sun was formerly said to dance at 
its rising on Easter morning — to which there may be an al- 
lusion in " Romeo and Juliet" (iii. 5), where Romeo, address- 
ing Juliet, says : 

" look, love, what envious streaks 
Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east ; 
Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day 
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops." 

We may also compare the expression in "Coriolanus" (v. 4): 



' " Illustrations of Shakespeare," 1839, pp. 255, 256. 
' Singer's " Shakespeare," vol. viii. p. 208. 



64 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

" The trumpets, sackbuts, psalteries, and fifes, 
Tabors, and cymbals, and the shouting Romans, 
Make the sun dance." 

Mr. Knight remarks, there was " something exquisitely 
beautiful in the old custom of going forth into the fields be- 
fore the sun had risen on Easter Day, to see him mounting 
over the hills with tremulous motion, as if it were an animate 
thing, bounding in sympathy with the redeemed of man- 
kind.'" 

A cloudy rising of the sun has generally been regarded as 
ominous — a superstition equally prevalent on the Continent 
as in this country. In " Richard III." (v. 3), King Richard 

asks : 

" Who saw the sun to-day ? 
Ratdiff. Not I, my lord, 

K. Richard. Then he disdains to shine ; for, by the book 
He should have braved the east an hour ago : 
A black day will it be to somebody." 

"The learned Moresin, in his ' Papatus,'" says Brand," 
*' reckons among omens the cloudy rising of the sun." 
Vergil, too, in his first Georgic (441-449), considers it a sign 
of stormy weather : ^ 

" Ille ubi nascentem maculis variaverit ortum 
Conditus in nubem, medioque refugerit orbe, 
Suspecti tibi sint imbres ; namque urget ab alto 
Arboribusque satisque Notus pecorique sinister, 
Aut ubi sub lucem densa inter nubila sese 
Diversi rumpent radii, aut ubi pallida surget, 
Tithoni croceum linquens Aurora cubile, 
Heu, male tum mitis defendet pampinus uvas : 
Tam multa in tectis crepitans salit horrida grando." 

A red sunrise is also unpropitious, and, according to a well- 
known rhyme : 

" If red the sun begins his race, 
Be sure the rain will fall apace." 



' See Knight's " Life of Shakespeare," 1843, p. 63. 
* " Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. iii. p. 241. 

^ See Swainson's " Weather-Lore," 1873, p. 176, for popular adages on ' 
the Continent. 



NATURAL PHENOMENA. 65 

This old piece of weather-wisdom is mentioned by our 
Lord in St. Matthew, xvi. 2, 3 : " When it is evening, ye say, 
It will be fair weather: for the sky is red. And in the 
morning, It will be foul weather to-day, for the sky is red 
and lowring." Shakespeare, in his " Venus and Adonis," 
thus describes it : 

" a red morn, that ever yet betoken'd 
Wreck to the seaman, tempest to the field, 
Sorrow to shepherds, woe unto the birds, 
Gusts and foul flaws to herd men and to herds." 

Mr. Swainson' shows that this notion is common on the 
Continent. Thus, at Milan the proverb runs, " If the morn 
be red, rain is at hand." 

Shakespeare, in " Richard II." (ii. 4), alludes to another 
indication of rain : 

" Thy sun sets weeping in the lowly west, 
Witnessing storms to come, woe and unrest." 

A " watery sunset " is still considered by many a forerun- 
ner of wet. A red sunset, on the other hand, beautifully de- 
scribed in " Richard III." (v. 3) — 

" The weary sun hath made a golden set," — 

is universally regarded as a prognostication of fine weather, 
and we find countless proverbs illustrative of this notion, 
one of the most popular being, " Sky red at night, is the 
sailor's delight." 

From the earliest times an eclipse of the sun was looked 
upon as an omen of coming calamity; and was oftentimes 
the source of extraordinary alarm as well as the occasion of 
various superstitious ceremonies. In 1597, during an eclipse 
of the sun, it is stated that, at Edinburgh, men and women 
thought the day of judgment Avas come.'' Many women 
swooned, much crying was heard in the streets, and in fear 
some ran to the kirk to pray. Mr. Napier says he remembers 



■ " Weather- Lore," pp. 175, 176. 

' Napier's " Folk-Lore of West of Scotland," 1879, p. 141. 

5 



66 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

"an eclipse about 1818, when about three parts of the sun 
was covered. The alarm in the village was very great, in- 
door work was suspended for the time, and in several families 
prayers were offered for protection, believing that it por- 
tended some awful calamity ; but when it passed off there 
was a general feeling of relief." In "King Lear" (i. 2), 
Gloucester remarks : " These late eclipses in the sun and 
moon portend no good to us : though the wisdom of nature 
can reason it thus and thus, yet nature finds itself scourged 
by the sequent effects ; love cools, friendship falls off, brothers 
divide; in cities, mutinies ; in countries, discord ; in palaces, 
treason ; and the bond cracked 'twixt son and father." 
Othello, too (v. 2), in his agony and despair, exclaims : 

" O heavy hour ! 
Methinks it should be now a huge eclipse 
Of sun and moon, and that the affrighted globe 
Should yawn at alteration." 

Francis Bernier' says that, in France, in 1654, at an eclipse 
of the sun, "some bought drugs against the eclipse, others 
kept themselves close in the dark in their caves and their 
well-closed chambers, others cast themselves in great mul- 
titudes into the churches ; those apprehending some malign 
and dangerous influence, and these believing that they were 
come to the last day, and that the eclipse would shake the 
foundations of nature."' 

In " 3 Henry VI." (ii. i), Shakespeare refers to a curious 
circumstance in which, on a certain occasion, the sun is re- 
ported to have appeared like three suns. Edward says, "do 
I see three suns?" to which Richard replies: 

"Three glorious suns, each one a perfect sun ; 
Not separated with the racking clouds, 
But sever'd in a pale clear-shining sky. 
See, see ! they join, embrace, and seem to kiss, 
As if they vow'd some league inviolable : 

' Quoted in Southey's " Commonplace Book," 1849, 2d series, p. 462. 
* See Tyler's "Primitive Culture," 1871, vol. i. pp. 261, 296, 297, 321. 



NATURAL niEXOMENA. 

Now are they but one lamp, one light, one sun. 
In this the heaven figures some event."' 



^7 



This fact is mentioned both by Hall and Holinshed ; the 
latter says : " At which tyme the sun (as some write) ap- 
peared to the Earl of March like tJircc siinncs, and sodainely 
joyned altogether in one, upon whiche sight hee tooke such 
courage, that he fiercely setting on his enemyes put them to 
flight." We may note here that on Trinity Sunday three 
suns are supposed to be seen. In the '' Memoires de 
I'Academie Celtique" (iii. 447), it is stated that " Le jour de 
la fete de la Trinite, quelqucs personne vont de grand matin 
dans la campagne, pour y voir levre trois soleils a la fois." 

According to an old proverb, to quit a better for a worse 
situation was spoken of as to go " out of God's blessing into 
the warm sun," a reference to which we find in " King Lear" 
(ii. 2), where Kent says : 

" Good king, that must approve the common saw, 
Thou out of heaven's benediction com'st 
To the warm sun." 

Dr. Johnson thinks that Hamlet alludes to this saying 
(i. 2), for when the king says to him, 

" How is it that the clouds still hang on you .'" 

he replies, 

" Not so, my lord ; I am too much i' the sun," 

i. c, out of God's blessing. 

This expression, says Mr. Dyce," is found in various authors 
from Heywood down to Swift. The former has : 

" In your running from him to me, yee runne 
Out of God's blessing into the warme sunne ;" 

and the latter : 

' In " 3 Henry VI." (ii. i), Edward says : 

" henceforward will I bear 
Upon my target three fair shining suns." 

' " Glossary to Shakespeare," p. 283. 



68 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

" Lord Sparkish. They say, marriages are made in heaven ; but I 
doubt, when she was married, she had no friend there. 
Aeverotii. Well, she's got out of God's blessing into the warm sun."* 

There seems to have been a prejudice from time immemo- 
rial against sunshine in March ; and, according to a German 
saying, it were " better to be bitten by a snake than to feel 
the sun in March." Thus, in " i Henry IV." (iv. i), Hotspur 

says : 

" worse than the sun in March, 

This praise doth nourish agues." 

Shakespeare employs the word "sunburned" in the sense 
of uncomely, ill-favored. In "Much Ado" (ii. i), Beatrice 
says, " I am sunburnt ;" and in " Troilus and Cressida" (i. 3), 
x'Eneas remarks : 

" The Grecian dames are sunburnt, and not worth 
The splinter of a lance." 

Moon. Apart from his sundry allusions to the " pale-faced," 
*' silver moon," Shakespeare has referred to many of the su- 
perstitions associated with it, several of which still linger on 
in country nooks. A widespread legend of great antiquity 
informs us that the moon is inhabited by a man," with a 
bundle of sticks on his back, who has been exiled thither for 
many centuries, and who is so far off that he is beyond the 
reach of death. This tradition, which has given rise to 
many superstitions, is still preserved under various forms in 
most countries ; but it has not been decided who the cul- 
prit originally was, and how he came to be imprisoned in 
his lonely abode. Dante calls him Cain ; Chaucer assigns 
his exile as a punishment for theft, and gives him a thorn- 
bush to carry, while Shakespeare also loads him with the 
thorns, but by way of compensation gives him a dog for a 
companion. In "The Tempest" (ii. 2), Caliban asks Ste- 
phano whether he has " not dropped from heaven ?" to which 
he answers, " Out o' the moon, I do assure thee : I was the 
man i' the moon Avhen time was." Whereuoon Caliban 



■ Ray gives the Latin equivalent " Ab equis ad asinos." 

* Baring-Gould's " Curious Myths of the Middle Ages," 1877, p. 190. 



NATURAL PHENOMENA. 6p 

says : " I have seen thee in her and I do adore thee : my 
mistress show'd me thee, and thy dog and thy bush." 
We may also compare the expression in "A Midsummer- 
Night's Dream " (v. i), where, in the directions for the per- 
formance of the play of " Pyramus and Thisbe," Moonshine 
is represented " with lanthorn, dog, and bush of thorn." 
And further on, in the same scene, describing himself. 
Moonshine says: "All that I have to say, is, to tell you 
that the lanthorn is the moon ; I, the man in the moon ;' 
this thorn-bush, my thorn-bush ; and this dog, my dog." 

Ordinarily," however, his offence is stated to have been 
Sabbath-breaking — an idea derived froni the Old Testament. 
Like the man mentioned in the Book of Numbers (xv. 32), 
he is caught gathering sticks on the Sabbath ; and, as an 
example to mankind, he is condemned to stand forever in 
the moon, with his bundle on his back. Instead of a dog, 
one German version places him with a woman, whose crime 
was churning butter on Sunday. The Jews have a legend 
that Jacob is the moon, and they believe that his face is 
visible. Mr. Baring-Gould^ says that the " idea of locating 
animals in the two great luminaries of heaven is very an- 
cient, and is a relic of a primeval superstition of the Aryan 
race." The natives of Ceylon, instead of a man, have placed 
a hare in the moon ; and the Chinese represent the moon 
by "a rabbit pounding rice in a mortar."* 

From the very earliest times the moon has not only been 
an object of popular superstition, but been honored by vari- 
ous acts of adoration. In Europe,'^ in the fifteenth century, 
" it was a matter of complaint that some still worshipped 
the new moon with bended knee, or hood or hat removed. 
And to this day we may still see a hat raised to her, half in 

' Cf. " Love's Labour's Lost" (v. 2) : " Yet still she is the moon, and 
I the man." 
- Fiske, " Myths and Mythmakers." 1873, p. 27. 
' "Curious Myths of the Middle Ages," 1877, p. 197. 

* Douce's " Illustrations of Shakespeare." 1839, p. 10. 

* For further information on this subject, see Tylor's " Primitive 
Culture," 1873, vol. i. pp. 288, 354-356; vol. ii. pp. 70, 202, 203. 



70 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

conservatism and half in jest. It is with deference to silver 
as the lunar metal that money is turned when the act of 
adoration is performed, while practical peasant wit dwells 
on the ill-luck of having no piece of silver when the new 
moon is first seen." Shakespeare often incidentally alludes 
to this form of superstition. To quote one or two out of 
many instances, Enobarbus, in "Antony and Cleopatra" 
(iv. 9), says : 

" Be witness to me, O thou blessed moon !" 

In " Love's Labour's Lost " (v. 2) the king says : 

" Vouchsafe, bright moon, and these thy stars, to shine, 
Those clouds removed, upon our watery eyne." 

Indeed, it was formerly a common practice for people to ad- 
dress invocations to the moon,' and even at the present day 
we find remnants of this practice both in this country and 
abroad. Thus, in many places it is customary for young 
women to appeal to the moon to tell them of their future 
prospects in matrimony," the following or similar lines being 
repeated on the occasion : 

" New moon, new moon, I hail thee : 
New moon, new moon, be kind to me ; 
If I marry man or man marry me. 
Show me how many moons it will be." 

It was also the practice to swear by the moon, to which we 
find an allusion in " Romeo and Juliet " (ii. 2), where Juliet 
reproves her lover for testifying his affections by this means : 

" O, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon. 
That monthly changes in her circled orb, 
Lest that thy love prove likewise variable." 

And again, in "The Merchant of Venice" (v. i ), where 
Gratiano exclaims: 

" By yonder moon I swear you do me wrong." 

We may note here that the inconstancy' of the moon is 

' See Brand's " Pop. Antiq.," vol. ill. pp. 142, 143. 

^ See " English Folk-lore," pp. 43, 44. 

^ " Primitive Culture," 1873, vol. i. pp. 354, 355. 



NATURAL PHENOMENA. ^j 

the subject of various myths, of which Mr. Tylor has given 
the following examples : Thus, an Australian legend says 
that Mityan, the moon, was a native cat, who fell in love 
with some one else's wife, and was driven away to wander 
ever since. A Slavonic legend tells us that the moon, king 
of night, and husband of the sun, faithlessly loved the morn- 
ing star, wherefore he was cloven through in punishment, 
as we see him in the sky. The Khasias of the Himalaya 
say that the moon falls monthly in love with his mother-in- 
law, who throws ashes in his face, whence his spots.' 

As in the case of the sun, an eclipse of the moon was for- 
merly considered ominous. The Romans' supposed it was 
owing to the influence of magical charms, to counteract 
which they had recourse to the sound of brazen instruments 
of all kinds. Juvenal alludes to this practice in his sixth 
Satire (441), when he describes his talkative woman : 

"Jam nemo tubas, nemo sera fatiget, 
Una laboranti poterit succurrere lunse." 

Indeed, eclipses, which to us are well-known phenomena 
witnessing to the exactness of natural laws, were, in the ear- 
lier stages of civilization, regarded as " the very embodiment 
of miraculous disaster." Thus, the Chinese believed that 
during eclipses of the sun and moon these celestial bodies 
were attacked by a great serpent, to drive away which they 
struck their gongs or brazen drums. The Peruvians, enter- 
taining a similar notion, raised a frightful din when the moon 
was eclipsed,^ while some savages would shoot up arrows to 
defend their luminaries against the enemies they fancied 
were attacking them. It was also a popular belief that the 
moon was affected by the influence of witchcraft, a notion 
referred to by Prospcro in " The Tempest " (v. i), who says : 

" His mother was a witch, and one so strong 
That could control the moon." 

^ The words " moonish " ("As You Like It," ill. 2) and " moonlike " 
(" Love's Labour's Lost," iv. 3) are used in the sense of inconstant. 
• See Deuce's " Illustrations of Shakespeare," 1839, p. 18. 
' Tylor's " Primitive Culture, vol. i. p. 329. 



72 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

In a former scene (ii. i) Gonzalo remarks: "You are gen- 
tlemen of brave mettle; you would lift the moon out of her 
sphere." Douce ' quotes a marginal reference from Adling- 
ton's translation of "Apuleius" (1596), a book well known 
to Shakespeare: " Witches in old time were supposed to be 
of such power that they could put downe the moone by 
their inchantment."^ One of the earliest references to 
this superstition among classical authorities is that in the 
"Clouds" of Aristophanes, where Strepsiades proposes the 
hiring of a Thessalian witch, to bring down the moon and 
shut her up in a box, that he might thus evade paying his 
debts by a month. Ovid, in his " Metamorphoses " (bk. xii. 
263), says : 

" Mater erat Mycale ; quam deduxisse canendo 
Saepe reluctanti constabat cornua lunae." 

Horace, in his fifth Epode (45), tells us : 

" Quse sidera excantata voce Thessala, 
Lunamque caelo deripit." ^ 

Reverting again to the moon's eclipse, such a season, be- 
ing considered most unlucky for lawful enterprises, was held 
suitable for evil designs. Thus, in " Macbeth" (iv. i), one 
of the witches, speaking of the ingredients of the caldron, 

says : 

" Gall of goat, and slips of yew, 
Sliver'd in the moon's eclipse." 

As a harbinger of misfortune it is referred to in "Antony 
and Cleopatra," where (iii. 13), Antony says: 

" Alack, our terrene moon 
Is now eclipsed ; and it portends alone 
The fall of Antony !" 

Milton, in his " Paradise Lost " (bk. i. 597), speaks much in 
the same strain : 

1 " Illustrations of Shakespeare," 1839, p. 16. 

^ See Scot's " Discovery of Witchcraft," 1584, pp. 174, 226, 227, 2^0. 
^ For further examples, see Douce's " Illustrations of Shakespeare," 
p. 17. 



NATURAL PHENOMENA. 73 

"as when the sun new-risen 
Looks through the horizontal misty air 
Shorn of his beams, or from behind the moon 
In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds 
On half the nations." 

And in " Lycidas," he says of the unlucky ship that was 
wrecked : 

" It was that fatal and perfidious bark 
Built in the eclipse." 

Its sanguine color is also mentioned as an indication of 
coming disasters in " Richard II." (ii. 4), where the Welsh 
captain remarks how : 

" The pale-faced moon looks bloody on the earth." 

And its paleness, too, in "A Midsummer-Night's Dream" 
(ii. 2), is spoken of as an unpropitious sign. 

According to a long-accepted theoiy, insane persons are 
said to be influenced by the moon ; and many old writers 
have supported this notion. Indeed, Shakespeare himself, 
in " Othello " (v. 2), tells how the moon when 

" She comes more nearer earth than she was wont, 
And makes men mad." 

Dr. Forbes Winslow, in his " Light : its Influence on Life 
and Health," says that " it is impossible altogether to ignore 
the evidence of such men as Pinel, Daquin, Guislain, and oth- 
ers, yet the experience of modern psjxhological physicians 
is to a great degree opposed to the deductions of these em- 
inent men." He suggests that the alleged changes observed 
among the insane at certain phases of the moon may arise, 
not from the direct, but the indirect, influence of the planet. 
It is well known that certain important meteorological phe- 
nomena result from the various phases of the moon, such as 
the rarity of the air, the electric conditions of the atmos- 
phere, the degree of heat, dryness, moisture, and amount of 
wind prevailing. It is urged, then, that those suffering from 
diseases of the brain and nervous system, affecting the mind, 
cannot be considered as exempt from the operation of agen- 



74. 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



cies that are admitted to affect patients afflicted with other 
maladies. Dr. Winslow further adds, that " an intelligent 
lady, who occupied for about five years the position of ma- 
tron in my establishment for insane ladies, has remarked 
that she invariably observed among them a greater agita- 
tion when the moon was at its full." A correspondent of 
" Notes and Queries " (2d series, xii. 492) explains the apparent 
aggravated symptoms of madness at the full moon by the 
fact that the insane are naturally more restless on light than 
on dark nights, and that in consequence loss of sleep makes 
them more excitable. We may note here, that in " Antony 
and Cleopatra " (iv. 9) Enobarbus invokes the moon as the 
"sovereign mistress of true melancholy." 

The moisture of the moon is invariably noticed by Shake- 
speare. In " Hamlet " (i. i) Horatio tells how 

" the moist star, 
Upon whose influence Neptune's empire stands, 
Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse." 

In "A Midsummer-Night's Dream" (ii. i) Titania says: 

" Therefore the moon, the governess of floods, 
Pale in her anger, washes all the air. 
That rheumatic diseases do abound." 

And in " The Winter's Tale " (i. 2) Polixenes commences by 
saying how : 

" Nine changes of the watery star hath been 

The shepherd's note, since we have left our throne 

Without a burthen." 

We may compare, too, the words of Enobarbus in "Antony 
and Cleopatra " (iv. 9), who, after addressing the moon, says : 
"The poisonous damp of night disponge upon me." And 
once more, in " Romeo and Juliet" (i. 4), we read of the 
" moonshine's watery beams." 

The same idea is frequently found in old writers. Thus, 
for instance, in Newton's " Direction for the Health of Mag- 
istrates and Studentes " (1574), we are told that "the moone 
is ladye of moisture." Bartholomaeus, in " De Proprietate 
Rerum," describes the moon as " mother of all humours, 



NATURAL THENOMENA. 75 

minister and ladye of the sea." ' In Lydgate's prologue to 
his " Story of Thebes " there are two lines not unhke those 
in "A Midsummer-Night's Dream," ah'eady quoted: 

" Of Lucina the moone, moist and pale, 
That many shoure fro heaven made availe." 

Of course, the moon is thus spoken of as governing the tides, 
and from its supposed influence on the weather.^ In " i Hen- 
ry IV." (i. 2) Falstaff alludes to the sea being governed "by 
our noble and chaste mistress, the moon ;" and in " Rich- 
ard III." (ii. 2) Queen Elizabeth says: 

" That I, being govcrn'd by the watery moon, 
May send forth plenteous tears to drown the world." 

We may compare, too, what Timon says (" Timon of Ath- 
ens," iv. 3j : 

"The sea's a thief, whose liquid surge resolves 
The moon into salt tears." 

The expression of Hecate, in " Macbeth " (iii. 5) : 

" Upon the corner of the moon 
There hangs a vaporous drop profound," 

seems to have been meant for the same as the I'h-iis Innarc 
of the ancients, being a foam which the moon was supposed 
to shed on particular herbs, when strongly solicited by en- 
chantment. Lucan introduces Erictho using it (" Phar.salia," 
book vi. 669) : " Et virus large lunare ministrat." 

By a popular astrological doctrine the moon was supposed 
to exercise great influence over agricultural operations, and 
also over many "of the minor concerns of life, such as the 
gathering of herbs, the killing of animals for the table, and 
other matters of a like nature." Thus the following passage 
in the "Merchant of Venice" (v. i), it has been suggested, 
has reference to the practices of the old herbalists who at- 
tributed particular xirtues to plants gathered during partic- 



^ See Douce's " Illustrations of Shakespeare," 1839, p. 1 16. 
* See Swainson's "Weather-Lore," 1873, pp. 182-192. 



^6 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

ular phases of the moon and hours of the night. After Lo- 
renzo has spoken of the moon shining brightly, Jessica adds: 

" In such a night 
Medea gather'd the enchanted herbs, 
That did renew old .^son." 

And in " Hamlet " (iv. 7) the description which Laertes gives 
of the weapon-poison refers to the same notion : 

" I bought an unction of a mountebank, 
So mortal that, but dip a knife in it, 
Where it draws blood no cataplasm so rare, 
Collected from all simples that have virtue 
Under the moon, can save the thing from death."' 

The sympathy of growing and declining nature with the 
waxing and waning moon is a superstition widely spread, 
and is as firmly believed in by many as when Tusser, in his 
" Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry," under " Feb- 
ruary" gave the following advice: 

" Sow peason and beans in the wane of the moon. 
Who soweth them sooner, he soweth too soon, 
That they with the planet may rest and arise. 
And flourish, with bearing most plentiful! wise." 

Warburton considers that this notion is alluded to by Shake- 
speare in " Troilus and Cressida " (iii. 2), where Troilus, speak- 
ing of the sincerity of his love, tells Cressida it is, 

" As true as steel, as plantage to the moon, 
As sun to day, as turtle to her mate." 

There is a little doubt as to the exact meaning of plantage 
in this passage. Nares observes that it probably means any- 
thing that is planted ; but Mr. Ellacombe, in his " Plant-lore 
of Shakespeare" (1878, p. 165), says "it is doubtless the 
same as plantain." 

It appears that, in days gone by, " neither sowing, plant- 
ing, nor grafting was ever undertaken without a scrupulous 
attention to the increase or waning of the moon." ' Scot, in 

' See Tylor's " Primitive Culture," 1873, vol. i. p. 130; " English Folk- 
Lore," 1878, pp. 41,42. 



^1 



NATURAL rHENOMENA. 7/ 

his " Discovery of Witchcraft," notes how " the poorc hus- 
bandman perceiveth that the increase of the moonc maketh 
plants fruitful, so as in the full moone they are in best 
strength ; decaieing in the wane, and in the conjunction do 
utterlie wither and vade." 

It was a prevailing notion that the moon had an attending 
star— Lilly calls it " Lunisequa;" and Sir Richard Hawkins, 
in his " Observations in a Voyage to the South Seas in i 593," 
published in 1622, remarks: "Some I have heard say, and 
others write, that there is a starre which never separateth 
itself from the moon, but a small distance." Staunton con- 
siders that there is an allusion to this idea in " Love's La- 
bour's Lost " (iv. 3), where the king says: 

" My love, her mistress, is a gracious moon : 
She an attending star, scarce seen a light." 

The sharp ends of the new moon are popularly termed 
horns— a term which occurs in " Coriolanus" (i. i)— 

" they threw their caps 
As they would hang them on the horns o' the moon." 

It is made use of in Decker's " Match me in London " (i.) : 

" My lord, doe you see this change i' the moone ? 
Sharp homes doe threaten windy weather." 

When the horns of the moon appear to point upwards the 
moon is said to be like a boat, and various weather prognos- 
tications are drawn from this phenomenon." According to 
sailors, it is an omen of fine weather, whereas others affirm it 
is a sign of rain— resembling a basin full of water about to 

fall. 

Among other items of folk-lore connected with the moon 
we may mention the moon-calf, a false conception, or fcEtus 
imperfectly formed, in consequence, as was supposed, of the 
influence of the moon. The best account of this fabulous 
substance may be found in Drayton's poem with that title. 
Trinculo, in " The Tempest " (ii. 2), supposes Caliban to be a 
moon-calf: " I hid me under the dead moon-calf's gaberdine." 

» See Swainson's " Weather-Lore," pp. 182, 183. 



78 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

It has been suggested that in calHng CaHban a moon-calf 
Shakespeare alluded to a superstitious belief formerly current, 
in the intercourse of demons and other non-human beings 
with mankind. In the days of witchcraft, it was supposed 
that a class of devils called Incubi and Succubi roamed the 
earth with the express purpose of tempting people to aban- 
don their purity of life. Hence, all badly deformed children 
were suspected of having had such an undesirable parentage.' 

A curious expression, " a sop o' the moonshine," occurs in 
*' King Lear" (ii. 2), which probably alludes to some dish so 
called. Kent says to the steward, '' Draw, you rogue ; for, 
though it be night, yet the moon shines; I'll make a sop o' 
the moonshine of you." 

There was a way of dressing eggs, called " eggs in moon- 
shine," of which Douce^ gives the following description: 
" Eggs were broken and boiled in salad oil till the yolks be- 
came hard. They were eaten with slices of onion fried in 
oil, butter, verjuice, nutmeg, and salt." " A sop in the moon- 
shine " must have been a sippet in this dish.^ 

Planets. The irregular motion of the planets was supposed 
to portend some disaster to mankind. Ulysses, in " Troilus 
and Cressida" (i. 3), declares how: 

"when the planets 
In evil mixture, to disorder wander, 
What plagues and what portents ! what mutiny ! 
What raging of the sea ! shaking of earth ! 
Commotion in the winds ! frights, changes, horrors, 
Divert and crack, rend and deracinate 
The unity and married calm of states 
Quite from their fixture." 

Indeed, the planets themselves were not thought, in days 

gone by, to be confined in any fixed orbit of their own, but 

ceaselessly to wander about, as the etymology of their name 

i demonstrates. A popular name for the planets Avas " wan- 

■ See Williams's "Superstitions of Witchcraft," pp. 123-125 ; Scot's 
" Discovery of Witchcraft," bk. iv. p. 145. 

^ " Illustrations of Shakespeare," 1839, p. 405. 
' Nares's "Glossary," 1872, vol. ii. p. 580. 



NATURAL PHENOMENA. ^q 

dering stars," of which Cotgrave says, " they bee also called 
wandering starres, because they never keep one certain place 
or station in the firmament." Thus Hamlet (v. i), approach- 
ing the grave of Ophelia, addresses Laertes : 

" What is he, whose grief 
Bears such an emphasis .'' whose phrase of sorrow j 

Conjures the wandering stars, and makes them stand | 

Like wonder-wounded hearers ?" 

In Tomkis's " Albumazar " (i. i) they are called " wanderers :" 

" Your patron Mercury, in his mysterious character 
Holds all the marks of the other wanderers." 

According to vulgar astrology, the planets, like the stars, w^ere 
supposed to affect, more or less, the affairs of this world, a 
notion frequently referred to by old writers. In " Winter's 
Tale" (ii. i), Hermione consoles herself in the thought — 

" There's some ill planet reigns : 
I must be patient till the heavens look 
With an aspect more favourable." 

In " I Henry VI." (i. i), the Duke of Exeter asks: 

" What ! shall we curse the planets of mishap 
That plotted thus our glory's overthrow ?" 

Again, King Richard (" Richard III.," iv. 4) : 

" Be opposite all planets of good luck 
To my proceeding." 

And once more, in " Hamlet " (i. i), Marcellus, speaking of the 
season of our Saviour's birth, says, " then no planets strike." 
That diseases, too, are dependent upon planetary influence 
is referred to in " Timon of Athens " (iv. 3) : 

" Be as a planetary plague, when Jove 
Will o'er some high-\Mccd city hang his poison 
In the sick air : let not thy sword skip one." 

" Fiery Trigon " was a term in the old judicial astrology, 
when the three upper planets met in a fiery sign — a phe- 
nomenon which was supposed to indicate rage and conten- 
tion. It is mentioned in " 2 Henry IV." (ii. 4): 



8o FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE.^ 

" P. Hen. Saturn and Venus this year in conjunction ! what says 
the almanac to that ? 

Poins. And, look, whether the fiery Trigon, his man, be not lisping 
to his master's old tables." 

Dr. Nash, in his notes to Butler's " Hudibras," says : " The 
twelve signs in astrology are divided into four trigons or tri- 
plicities, each denominated from the connatural element ; so 
they are three fiery [signs], three airy, three watery, and three 
earthy:" 

Fiery — Aries, Leo, Sagittarius. 

Airy — Gemini, Libra, Aquarius. 

Watery — Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces. 

Earthly — Taurus, Virgo, Capricornus. 
Thus, when the three superior planets met in Aries, Leo, 
or Sagittarius, they formed a fiery ti'igon ; when in Cancer, 
Scorpio, and Pisces, a watery one. 

Charles s Wain was the old name for the seven bright stars 
of the constellation Ursa Major. The constellation was so 
named in honor of Charlemagne ; or, according to some, it 
is a corruption of chorles or churl's, i. r., rustic's, wain. Chorl 
is frequently used for a countryman, in old books, from the 
Saxon ceorl. In " i Henry IV." (ii. i), the Carrier says, 
" Charles' wain is over the new chimney." 

Music of the spheres. Pythagoras was the first who sug- 
gested this notion, so beautifully expressed by Shakespeare 
in the " Merchant of Venice" (v. i): 

" There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st, 
But in his motion like an angel sings, 
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins." 

Plato says that a siren sits on each planet, who carols a 
most sweet song, agreeing to the motion of her own particu- 
lar planet, but harmonizing with the other seven. Hence 
Milton, in his " Arcades," speaks of the " celestial Sirens' 
harmony, that sit upon the nine enfolded spheres." 

Stars. An astrological doctrine, which has kept its place 
in modern popular philosophy, asserts that mundane events 
are more or less influenced by the stars. That astronomers 



NATURAL PHENOMENA. gj 

should have divided the sun's course into imaginary signs of 
the Zodiac, was enough, says Mr. T}'lor,' to originate astro- 
logical rules " that these celestial signs have an actual effect 
on real earthly rams, bulls, crabs, lions, virgins." Hence we 
are told that a child born under the sign of the Lion will be 
courageous ; but one born under the Crab will not go forth 
well in life ; one born under the Waterman is likely to be 
drowned, and so forth. Shakespeare frequently alludes to 
this piece of superstition, which, it must be remembered, was 
carried to a ridiculous height in his day. In " Julius Caesar" 
(i. 2), Cassius says : 

" The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars. 
But in ourseh'es, that we are underlings." 

In the following passage in " Twelfth Night" (i. 3): 

" Si'r Tab. Were we not born under Taurus.' 

Sir And. Taurus ! that's sides and heart. 
Sir Tob. No, sir; it is legs and thighs." 

" Both the knights," says Mr. Douce (" Illustrations of Shake- 
speare," p. 54), " are wrong in their astrology, according to 
the almanacs of the time, which make Taurus govern the 
neck and throat." 

Beatrice, in "Much Ado about Nothing" (ii. i), says: 
" there was a star danced, and under that a\ as I born ;" 
Kent, in " King Lear" (iv. 3), remarks, 

" It is the stars, 
The stars above us, govern our conditions ;" 

and once more, in " Pericles" (i. i). King Antiochus, speak- 
ing of the charming qualities of his daughter, says : 

" Bring in our daughter, clothed like a bride. 
For the embracements even of Jove himself : 
At whose conception, till Lucina rcign'd, 
Nature this dowry gave, to glad her presence, 
The .senate-house of planets all did sit. 
To knit in her their best perfections.'""' 

' " Primitive Culture," vol. i. p. 131. 

^Cf. "Richard III." (iv. 4); "i Henry IV." (i. i, iii. i) ; "Antony 
and Cleopatra" (iii. 13); "The Tempest" (i. 2); "Hamlet" (i. 4); 
"Cymbeline" (v. 4) ; "Winter's Tale" (iii. 2) ; " Richard II." (iv. i). 

6 



82 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

Throughout the East, says Mr. Tylor,' " astrology even now 
remains a science in full esteem. The condition of mediaeval 
Europe may still be perfectly realized by the traveller in 
Persia, where the Shah waits for days outside the walls of his 
capital till the constellations allow him to enter; and where, 
on the days appointed by the stars for letting blood, it liter- 
ally flows in streams from the barbers' shops in the streets. 
Professor Wuttke declares that there are many districts in 
Germany where the child's horoscope is still regularly kept 
with the baptismal certificate in the family chest." Astrology 
is ridiculed in a masterly manner in " King Lear" (i. 2) ; andl 
Warburton suggests that if the date of the first performance 
of "King Lear" were well considered, " it would be found that 
something or other had happened at that time which gave a 
more than ordinary run to this deceit, as these words seem 
to indicate — ' I am thinking, brother, of a prediction I read 
this other day, what should follow these eclipses.' " Zouch,^ 
speaking of Queen Mary's reign, tells us that "Judicial as- 
trology was much in use long after this time. Its predic- 
tions were received with reverential awe ; and even men of 
the most enlightened understandings were inclined to be- 
lieve that the conjunctions and oppositions of the planets 
had no little influence in the affairs of the world." 

The pretence, also, of predicting events, such as pestilence, 
from the aspect of the heavenly bodies — one form of medi- 
cal astrology — is noticed in "Venus and Adonis:" 

" Long may they kiss each other, for this cure ! 
O, never let their crimson Uveries wear ! 
And as they last, their verdure still endure, 
To drive infection from the dangerous year ! 
That the star-gazers, having writ on death. 
May say, the plague is banish'd by thy breath !" 

Heroes were in ancient times immortalized by being 
placed among the stars, a custom to which Bedford refers in 
"I Henry VL"(i. i) : 

^ " Primitive Culture," vol. i. p. 131 ; see Brand's " Popular Antiqui- 
ties," 1849, vol. iii. pp. 341-348. 
* "Walton's Lives," 1796, p. 113, note. 



NATURAL PHENOMENA. 83 

" A far more glorious star thy soul will make 
Than Julius Caesar." 

And, again, " Pericles" (v. 3) exclaims : 

" Heavens make a star of him." 

On a medal of Hadrian, the adopted son of Trajan and 
Plotina, the divinity of his parents is expressed by placing a 
star over their heads; and in like manner the medals of 
Faustina the Elder exhibit her on an eagle, her head sur- 
rounded with stars.' 

In " 2 Henry IV." (iv. 3) a ludicrous term for the stars is, 
"cinders of the elements;" and in "Merchant of Venice" 
(v. i) they are designated " candles of the night." 

Alctcors. An elegant description of a meteor well known 
to sailors is given by Ariel in " The Tempest " (i. 2) : 

"someti.me I'd divide 
And burn in n:any places ; on the topmast, 
The yards, and bowsprit, would I flame distinctly, 
Then meet and join." 

It is called, by the French and Spaniards inhabiting the 
coasts of the Mediterranean, St. Helme's or St. Telme's fire ; 
by the Italians, the fire of St. Peter and St. Nicholas. It is 
also knowni as the fire of St. Helen, St. Herm, and St. Clare. 
Douce" tells us that whenever it appeared as a single flame 
it was supposed by the ancients to be Helena, the sister of 
Castor and Pollux, and in this state to bring ill luck, from the 
calamities which this lady is known to have caused in the 
Trojan war. When it came as a double flame it w^as called 
Castor and Pollux, and accounted a good omen. It has been 
described as a little blaze of fire, sometimes appearing by 
night on the tops of soldiers' lances, or at sea on masts and 
sailyards, w'hirling and leaping in a moment from one place 
to another. According to some, it never appears but after 
a tempest, and is supposed to lead people to suicide by 
drowning. Shakespeare in all probability consulted Bat- 



' Douce's " Illustrations of Shakespeare," 1839, p. 397. 
= lb:d. p. 3. 



84 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

man's '' Golden Books of the Leaden Goddes," who, speak- 
ing of Castor and Pollux, says : " They were figured like two 
lampes or cresset lightes— one on the toppe of a maste, the 
other on the stemme or foreshippe." He adds that if the 
first light appears in the stem or foreship and ascends up- 
wards, it is a sign of good luck ; if " either lights begin at the 
topmast, bowsprit," or foreship, and descends towards the 
sea, it is a sign of a tempest. In taking, therefore, the latter 
position, Ariel had fulfilled the commands of Prospero, and 
raised a storm.' Mr. Swainson, in his " Weather-Lore " (1873, 
p. 193), quotes the following, which is to the same purport : 

" Last night I saw Saint Elmo's stars, 
With their glittering lanterns all at play, 
On the tops of the masts and the tips of the spars. 
And I knew we should have foul weather that day." 

Capell, in his "School of Shakespeare" (1779, iii. 7), has 
pointed out a passage in Hakluyt's " Voyages " (i 598, iii. 450), 
which strikingly illustrates the speech of Ariel quoted above : 
" I do remember that in the great and boysterous storme of 
this foule weather, in the night, there came vpon the toppe 
of our maine yarde and maine maste, a certaine little light, 
much like unto the light of a little candle, which the Span- 
iards called the Cuerpo-Santo, and said it was St Elmo, whom 
they take to bee the aduocate of sailers. . . . This light con- 
tinued aboord our ship about three houres, flying from maste 
to maste, and from top to top ; and sometimes it would be 
in two or three places at once." This meteor was by some 
supposed to be a spirit ; and by others " an exhalation of 
moyst vapours, that are ingendered by foul and tempestuous 
weather."^ Mr. Thoms, in his " Notelets on Shakespeare" 
(1865, p. 59), says that, no doubt, Shakespeare had in mind 
the will-o'-the-wisp.' 

Firc-Drakc,\\\\\Q\\ is jocularly used in " Henry VHL" (v. 4) 

' See Brand's " Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. iii- p. 400. 
' Purchas, " His Pilgrimes" (1625, pt, i, lib. iii. p. 133), quoted by Mr. 
Aldis Wright in his " Notes to The Tempest," 1875, p. 86. 
= See Puck as Will-o'-the-Wisp ; chapter on " Fairy-Lore." 



NATURAL PHENOMENA. 85 

for a man with a red face, was one of the popular terms for 
the vvall-o'-the-wisp/ and Burton, in his " Anatomy of Melan- 
choly," says: " Fiery spirits or devils are such as commonly 
work by fire-drakes, or ignes fatui, which lead men often in 
flumina et praecipitia." In Bullokar's " English Expositor" 
(161 6), we have a quaint account of this phenomenon : " Fire- 
drake ; a fire sometimes seen flying in the night like a dragon. 
Common people think it a spirit that keepeth some treasure 
hid, but philosophers affirme it to be a great unequal exhala- 
tion inflamed betweene two clouds, the one hot, the other 
cold, which is the reason that it also smoketh, the middle 
part whereof, according to the proportion of the hot cloud 
being greater than the rest, maketh it seem like a bellie, and 
both ends like unto a head and taill."' White, however, in 
his '' Peripateticall Institutions" (p. 1 56), calls the fiery-dragon 
or fire-drake, "a weaker kind of lightning. Its livid colors, 
and its falling without noise and slowly, demonstrate a great 
mixture of watery exhalation in it. . . . 'Tis sufficient for its 
shape, that it has some resemblance of a dragon, not the ex- 
presse figure." 

Among other allusions to the will-o'-the-wisp by Shake- 
speare, Mr. Hunter^ notices one in ''King Lear"(iii. 4), 
where Gloster's torch being seen in the distance, the fool 
says, " Look, here comes a walking fire." Whereupon Ed- 
gar replies, " This is the foul fiend, Flibbertigibbet ; he be- 
gins at curfew, and walks till the first cock." " From which," 
observes Mr. Hunter, " Flibbertigibbet seems to be a name 
for the will-o'-the-wisp. Hence the propriety of ' He bcgi/is 
at ciirfciv, and walks till the crowing of the cock,' that is, is 

' See " Notes and Queries," 5th series, vol. x. p. 499 ; Brand's " Pop. 
Antiq.," 1849, vol. iii. p. 410 ; Nares's " Glossary," vol. i. p. 309. 

^ A "fire-drake" appears to have been also an artificial firework, 
perhaps what is now called a serpent. Thus, in Middleton's "Your 
Five Gallants" (1607) : 

"But, like fire-drakes. 
Mounted a little, gave a crack and fell." 

^ " New Illustrations of the Life, Studies, and Writings of Shake- 
speare," vol. ii. p. 272. 



86 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

seen in all the dark of the night." It appears that when 
Shakespeare wrote, "a walking fire" was a common name 
for the ignis fatuus, as we learn from the story of " How 
Robin Goodfellow lead a company of fellows out of their 
way :" " A company of young men, having been making 
merry Avith their sweethearts, Avere, at their coming home, 
to come over a heath ; Robin Goodfellow, knowing of it, met 
them, and to make some pastime hee led them up and dov/ne 
the heathe a whole night, so that they could not get out of 
it, for hee went before them in the shape of a zualking fire, 
which they all saw and followed till the day did appeare ; 
then Robin left them, and at his departure spake these 
words : 

" ' Get you home, you merry lads. 

Tell your mammies and your dads, 

And all those that newes desire 

How you saw a walking fire, 

Wenches, that doe smile and lispe. 

Use to call me willy-wispe.'" 

Another allusion to this subject occurs in " The Tempest " 
(iv. i), where Stephano, after Ariel has led him and his drunk- 
en companions through " tooth'd briers, sharp furzes, prick- 
ing goss and thorns," and at last " left them i' the filthy 
mantled pool," reproaches Caliban in these words : " Mon- 
ster, your fairy, which you say is a harmless fairy, has done 
little better than played the Jack with us " — that is, to quote 
Dr. Johnson's explanation of this passage, " he has played 
Jack-with-a-lanthorn, has led us about like an ignis fatuiis, 
by which travellers are decoyed into the mire."' Once 
more, when Puck, in " A Midsummer-Night's Dream " (iii. i), 
speaks of the various forms he assumes in order to " mislead 
night wanderers, laughing at their harm," he says: 

" Sometime a horse I'll be, sometime a hound, 
A hog, a headless bear, sometime a fire." 

Shakespeare, no doubt, here alludes to the will-o'-the wisp, 
' See Thoms's " Notelets on Shakespeare," p. 59, 



NATURAL PHENOMENA. gy 

an opinion shared by Mr. Joseph Ritson,' who says: "This 
Puck, or Robin Goodfellovv, seems Ukewise to be the illusory 
candle-holder, so fatal to travellers, and who is more usually 
called ' Jack-a-lantern,'° or ' Will-with-a-wisp,' and ' Kit-with- 
the-candlestick.' " Milton, in " Paradise Lost " (book ix.), 
alludes to this deceptive gleam in the following lines: 

" A wandering fire 
Compact of unctuous vapour, which the night 
Condenses, and the cold environs round, 
Kindled through agitation to a flame, 
Which oft, they say, some evil spirit attends. 
Hovering and blazing with delusive light, 
Misleads th' amaz'd night-wanderer from his way 
To bogs and mires, and oft through pond and pool."^ 

This appearance has given rise to a most extensive folk- 
lore, and is embodied in many of the fairy legends and su- 
perstitions of this and other countries. Thus, in Germany, 
Jack-o'-lanterns are said to be the souls of unbaptizcd chil- 
dren, that have no rest in the grave, and must hover between 
heaven and earth. In many places they are called land- 
measurers, and are seen like figures of fire, running to and 
fro with a red-hot measuring rod. These are said to be per- 
sons who have falsely sworn away land, or fraudulently meas- 
ured it, or removed landmarks.' In the neighborhood of 
Magdeburg, they are known as " Liichtemannekens ;" and to 

' " Fairy Mythology," edited by Hazlitt, 1875, P- 4°- 

^ Among the many other names given to this appearance may be 
mentioned the following : " Will-a-wisp," " Joan-in-the-wad,'' " Jacket- 
a-wad," " Peg-a-lantern,"' " Elf-fire," etc. A correspondent of " Notes 
and Queries" (5th series, vol. x. p. 499) says : "The wandering meteor of 
the moss or fell appears to have been personified as Jack, Gill, Joan, 
Will, or Robin, indifferently, according as the supposed spirit of the 
lamp seemed to the particular rustic mind to be a male or female ap- 
parition." In Worcestershire it is called " Hob-and-his-lanthorn," 
and " Hobany's," or " Hobncdy's Lanthorn." 

^ Mr. Ritson says that Milton " is frequently content to pilfer a iiap- 
py expression from Shakespeare — on this occasion. ' night-wanderer.'" 
He elsewhere calls it "the friar's lantern." 

* Thorpe, " Northern Mythology," 1852, vol. iii. pp. 85, 15S, 220. 



88 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

cause them to appear, it is sufficient to call out " Ninove, 
Ninove," In the South Altmark they are termed " Dicke- 
poten ;" and if a person only prays as soon as he sees one, 
he draws it to him; if he curses, it retires. In some parts, 
too, a popular name is " Huckepoten," and " Tuckbolde." 
The Jack-o'-lanterns of Denmark' are the spirits of unright- 
eous men, who, by a false glimmer, seek to mislead the trav- 
eller, and to decoy him into bogs and moors. The best safe- 
guard against them, when they appear, is to turn one's cap 
inside out. A similar notion occurs in Devonshire with re- 
gard to the Pixies, who delight in leading astray such per- 
sons as they find abroad after nightfall ; the only remedy to 
escape them being to turn some part of the dress. In Nor- 
mandy these fires are called " Feux Follets," and they are 
believed to be cruel spirits, whom it is dangerous to encoun- 
ter. Among the superstitions which prevail in connection 
with them, two, says Mr. Thoms,'' are deserving of notice: 
" One is, that the ignis fat mis is the spirit of some unhappy 
woman, who is destined to run en fiiroUc, to expiate her in- 
trigues wath a minister of the church, and it is designated 
from that circumstance La Fourlore, or La Fourolle." An- 
other opinion is, that Le Feu Follet is the soul of a priest, 
who has been condemned thus to expiate his broken vows 
of perpetual chastity; and it is very probable that it is to 
some similar belief existing in this country, at the time when 
he wrote, that Milton alludes in " L'Allegro," when he says: 

" She was pinched and pulled, she said. 
And he by Friar's Lanthorn led." 

In Brittany the " Porte-brandon " appears in the form of a 
child bearing a torch, which he turns like a burning wheel; 
and with this, we are told, he sets fire to the villages, which 
are suddenly, sometimes in the middle of the night, wrapped 
in flames. 

The appearance of meteors Shakespeare ranks among 
omens, as in " i Henry IV." (ii. 4), where Bardolph says: 

* " Notelets on Shakespeare," pp. 64, 65. 
^ Ibid. 



NATURAL PHENOMENA. go 

" My lord, do you see these meteors ? do you behold these ex- 
halations? What think you they portend?" And in " King 
John " (iii. 4), Pandulph speaks of meteors as " prodigies and 
signs." The Welsh captain, in " Richard II," (ii. 4), says: 

" 'Tis thought the king is dead ; we will not stay. 
The bay-trees in our country are all witherd, 
And meteors fright the fixed stars of heaven." 

Comet. From the earliest times comets have been super- 
stitiously regarded, and ranked among omens. Thus Thu- 
cydides tells us that the Peloponnesian war was heralded by 
an abundance of earthquakes and comets; and Vergil, in 
speaking of the death of Caesar, declares that at no other 
time did comets and other supernatural prodigies appear in 
greater numbers. It is probably to this latter event that 
Shakespeare alludes in " Julius Caesar" (ii. 2), where he rep- 
resents Calpurnia as saying: 

" When beggars die, there are no comets seen ; 
The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes." 

Again, in " i Henry VI." (i. i), the play opens with the fol- 
lowing words, uttered by the Duke of Bedford : 

•' Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night ! 
Comets, importing change of times and states, 
Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky, 
And with them scourge the bad revolting stars 
That have consented unto Henry's death !" 

In "Taming of the Shrew" (iii. 2), too, Petruchio, when he 
makes his appearance on his wedding-day, says: 

" Gentles, methinks you frown : 
And wherefore gaze this goodly company, 
As if they saw some wondrous monument, 
Some comet, or unusual prodigj' .'" 

In " I Henry IV." (iii. 2), the king, when telling his son 
how he had always avoided making himself " common-hack- 
ney'd in the eyes of men," adds: 

"By being seldom seen, I could not stir 
But, like a comet, I v/as wonder'd at.'' 



90 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



Arcite, in the "Two Noble Kinsmen" (v. i), when address- 
ing the altar of Mars, says : 

" Whose approach 
Comets forewarn." ' 

Dew. Among the many virtues ascribed to dew was its 
supposed power over the complexion, a source of supersti- 
tion which still finds many believers, especially on May morn- 
ing. All dew, however, does not appear to have possessed 
this quality, some being of a deadly or malignant quality. 
Thus Ariel, in " The Tempest " (i. 2), speaks of the " deep 
brook" in the harbor: 

" where once 

Thou call'dst me up at midnight to fetch dew 

From the still vex'd Bermoothes." 

And Caliban (i. 2), when venting his rage on Pro'spero and 
Miranda, can find no stronger curse than the following : 

" As wicked dew as e'er my mother brush'd, 
With raven's feather from unwholesome fen 
Drop on you both !" 

It has been suggested that in "Antony and Cleopatra" 
(iii. 12) Shakespeare may refer to an old notion whereby the 
sea was considered the source of dews as well as rain. Eu- 
phronius is represented as saying : 

" Such as I am, I come from Antony : 
I was of late as petty to his ends 
As is the morn-dew on the myrtle leaf 
To his grand sea." 

According to an erroneous notion formerly current, it was 
supposed that the air, and not the earth, drizzled dew — a 
notion referred to in " Romeo and Juliet " (iii. 5) : 
" When the sun sets, the air doth drizzle dew." 
And in " King John " (ii. i) : 

" Before the dew of evening fall'" 

' See Proctor's " Myths of Astronomy ;" Chambers's " Domestic 
Annals of Scotland," 1858, vol. ii. pp. 410-412 ; Douce's " Illustrations 
of Shakespeare," pp. 364, 365. 



NATURAL PHENOMENA. qI 

Then there is the celebrated honey-dew, a substance which 
has furnished the poet with a touching simile, which he has 
put into the mouth of " Titus Andronicus " (iii. i) : 

" When I did name her brothers, then fresh tears 
Stood on her cheeks ; as doth the honey-dew 
Upon a gather'd Hly almost wither'd." 

According to Pliny, " honey-dew " is the saliva of the stars, 
or a liquid produced by the purgation of the air. It is, how- 
ever, a secretion deposited by a small insect, which is distin- 
guished by the generic name of aphis.' 

Rainboiv. Secondary rainbows, the watery appearance in 
the sky accompanying the rainbow, are in many places 
termed " water-galls " — a term we find in the *' Rape of 
Lucrcce" (1586-89) : 

" And round about her tear-distained eye 
Blue circles stream'd, like rainbows in the sky : 
These water-galls in her dim element 
Foretell new storms to those already spent." 

Horace Walpole several times makes use of the word: 
" False good news are always produced by true good, like 
the water-gall by the rainbow ;" and again, " Thank heaven 
it is complete, and did not remain imperfect, like a water- 
gall." ' In "The Dialect of Craven " we find "Water-gall, 
a secondary or broken rainbow. Germ. Wasser-galle." 

Thunder. According to an erroneous fancy the destruc- 
tion occasioned by lightning was eftected by some solid body 
known as the thunder-stone or thunder-bolt. Thus, in the 
beautiful dirge in " Cymbeline " (iv. 2) : 

" Giti'd. Fear no more the lightning flash, 
Arv. Or the all-dreaded thunder-stone." 

Othello asks (v. 2) : 

" Are there no stones in heaven 
But what serve for the thunder.'" 

' See Patterson's " Insects Mentioned by Shakespeare," 1841, p. 145. 
* " Letters," vol. 1. p. 310 ; vol. vi. pp. i, 187. — Ed. Cunningham. 



92 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

And in " Julius Cxsar " (i. 3), Cassius says : 

" And, thus unbraced, Casca, as you see, 
Have bared my bosom to the thunder-stone." 

The thunder-stone is the imaginary product of the thun- 
der, which the ancients called Brontia, mentioned by Pliny 
(" Nat. Hist." xxxvii. 10) as a species of gem, and as that 
which, falling with the lightning, does the mischief. It is 
the fossil commonly called the Belemnite, or finger-stone, 
and now known to be a shell. 

A superstitious notion prevailed among the ancients that 
those who were stricken with lightning were honored by Ju- 
piter, and therefore to be accounted holy. It is probably to 
this idea that Shakespeare alludes in - Antony and Cleopa- 
tra " (ii. 5): 

" Some innocents 'scape not the thunderbolt." ' 

The bodies of such were supposed not to putrefy; and 
after having been exhibited for a certain time to the peo- 
ple, were not buried in the usual manner, but interred on 
the spot where the lightning fell, and a monument erected 
over them. Some, however, held a contrary opinion. Thus 
Persius (sat. ii. 1. 27) says : 

"Triste jaces lucis evitandumque bidental." 

The ground, too, that had been smitten by a thunderbolt 
was accounted sacred, and afterwards enclosed ; nor did any 
one even presume to walk on it. Such spots were, there- 
fore, consecrated to the gods, and could not in future be- 
come the property of any one. 

Among the many other items of folk-lore associated 
with thunder is a curious one referred to in "Pericles" 
(iv. 3): "Thunder shall not so awake the bed of eels." 
The notion formerly being that thunder had the effect of 
rousing eels from their mud, and so rendered them more 
easy to be taken in stormy weather. Marston alludes to 



Douce's " Illustrations of Shakespeare," 1839, p. 369. 



NATURAL PHENOMENA. g^ 

this superstition in his satires (" Scourge of Villainie," sat. 

vii.) : 

" They are nought but eeles, that never will appeare 
Till that tempestuous winds or thunder teare 
Their slimy beds." 

The silence that often precedes a thunder-storm is thus 
graphically described in " Hamlet " (ii. 2) : 

" ' we often see, against some storm, 
A silence in the heavens, the rack stand still. 
The bold winds speechless, and the orb below 
As hush as death, anon the dreadful thunder 
Doth rend the region.' " 

EartJiquakcs, around which so many curious myths and 
superstitions have clustered,' are scarcely noticed by Shake- 
speare. They are mentioned among the ominous signs of 
that terrible night on which Duncan is so treacherously 
slain (" Macbeth," ii. 3) : 

" the obscure bird 
Clamour'd the livelong night : some say, the earth 
Was feverous and did shake." 

And in " i Henry IV." (iii. i) Hotspur assigns as a reason 
for the earthquakes the following theory : 

" Diseased nature oftentimes breaks forth 
In strange eruptions ; oft the teeming earth 
Is with a kind of colic pinch'd and vex'd 
By the imprisoning of unruly wind 
Within her womb; which, for enlargement striving, 
Shakes the old beldam earth, and topples down 
Steeples, and moss-grown towers." 

Equinox. The storms that prevail in spring at the vernal 
equinox are aptly alluded to in '' Macbeth" (i. 2): 

" As whence the sun 'gins his reflection 
Shipwrecking storms and direful thunders break, 
So from that spring, whence comfort seem'd to come. 
Discomfort swells." 

— the meaning being: the beginning of the reflection of the 

' See Tylor's " Primitive Culture," vol. i. pp. 364-367. 



94 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



sun is the epoch of his passing from the severe to the milder 
season, opening, however, with storms. 

Wind. An immense deal of curious weather-lore' has been 
associated with the wind from the earliest period ; and in 
our own and foreign countries innumerable proverbs are 
found describing the future state of the weather from the 
position of the wind, for, according to an old saying, " every 
wind has its weather." Shakespeare has introduced some 
of these, showing how keen an observer he was of those 
every-day sayings which have always been much in use, es- 
pecially among the lower classes. Thus the proverbial wet 
which accompanies the wind when in the south is mentioned 
in " As You Like It " (iii. 5) : 

" Like foggy south, puffing with wind and rain." 

And again, in " i Henry IV." (v. i): 

" The southern wind 
Doth play the trumpet to his [/. e., the sun's] purposes ; 
And by his hollow whistling in the leaves 
Foretells a tempest, and a blustering day." 

A popular saying to the same effect, still in use, tells us that : 

"When the wind is in the south, 
It is in the rain's mouth." 

Again, in days gone by, the southerly winds were generally 
supposed to be bearers of noxious fogs and vapors, frequent 
allusions to which are given by Shakespeare. Thus, in " The 
Tempest" (i. 2), Caliban says: 

" a south-west blow on ye 
And blister you all o"er." 

A book," too, with which, as already noticed, Shakespeare 
appears to have been familiar, tells us, "This southern wind 
is hot and moist. Southern winds corrupt and destroy; 
they heat, and make men fall into the sickness." Hence, in 



' See Swainson's "Weather-Lore." 

^ Batman upon Bartholomseus — " De Proprietatibus Rerum," lib. xi. 
c. .^. 



NATURAL PHENOMENA. g^ 

" Troilus and Cressida" (v. i), Thersltes speaks of" the rotten 
diseases of the south;" and in "Coriolanus" (i. 4), Marcius 
exclaims : 

" All the contagion of the south light on you." 

Once more, in " CymbeHne" (ii. 3), Cloten speaks in the same 
strain : " The south fog rot him." 

Flazvs. These are sudden gusts of wind. It was the 
opinion, says Warburton, " of some philosophers that the 
vapors being congealed in the air by cold (which is the most 
intense in the morning), and being afterwards rarefied and 
let loose by the warmth of the sun, occasion those sudden 
and impetuous gusts of wind which were called ' flaws.' " 
Thus he comments on the following passage in " 2 Henry 
IV." (iv. 4) : 

" As humorous as winter, and as sudden 
As flaws congealed in the spring of day." 

In " 2 Henry VI." (iii. i) these outbursts of wind are further 
alluded to : 

" And this fell tempest shalj not cease to rage 
Until the golden circuit on my head, 
Like to the glorious sun's transparent beams, 
Do calm the fury of this mad-bred flaw." 

Again, in "Venus and Adonis" (425), there is an additional 
reference : 

" Like a red morn, that ever yet betoken'd 
Wreck to the seaman, tempest to the field, 
Sorrow to shepherds, woe unto the birds. 
Gusts and foul flaws to herdmen and to herds." 

In the Cornish dialect a Jiaiv signifies primitively a cut.' 
But it is also there used in a secondary sense for those sud- 
den or cutting gusts of wind.^ 

Squalls. There is a common notion that " the sudden 
storm lasts not three hours," an idea referred to by John of 
Gaunt in " Richard II." (ii. i) : 

" Small showers last long, but sudden storms are short." 

' Polwhele's " Cornish Vocabulary." 

' Cf. " Macbeth," iii. 4, " O, these flaws and starts." 



96 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

Thus, in Norfolk, the peasantry say that " the faster the rain, 
the quicker the hold up," which is only a difference in words 
from the popular adage, " after a storm comes a calm." 

Clouds. In days gone by, clouds floating before the wind, 
like a reek or vapor, were termed racking clouds. Hence in 
" 3 Henry VI." (ii. i), Richard speaks of: 

"Three glorious suns, each one a perfect sun ; 
Not separated with the racking clouds." 

This verb, though now obsolete, was formerly in common 
use; and in "King Edward HI.," 1596, we read: 

" Like inconstant clouds, 
That, rack'd upon the carriage of the winds, 
Increase," etc. 

At the present day one may often hear the phrase, the 
^ rack of the weather, in our agricultural districts ; many,'too, 
' of the items of weather-lore noticed by Shakespeare being 
still firmly credited by our peasantry. 



CHAPTER VI. 

BIRDS. 

In the present chapter we have not only a striking proof 
of Shakespeare's minute acquaintance with natural history, 
but of his remarkable versatility as a writer. While display- 
ing a most extensive knowledge of ornithology, he has fur- 
ther illustrated his subject by alluding to those numerous 
legends, popular sayings, and superstitions which have, in 
this and other countries, clustered round the feathered race. 
Indeed, the following pages are alone sufficient to show, if 
it were necessary, how fully he appreciated every branch of 
antiquarian lore ; and what a diligent student he must have 
been in the pursuit of that wide range of information, the 
possession of which has made him one of the most many- 
sided writers that the world has ever seen. The numerous 
incidental allusions, too, by Shakespeare, to the folk-lore of 
bygone days, while showing how deeply he must have read 
and gathered knowledge from every available source, serve 
as an additional proof of his retentive memory, and marvel- 
lous power of embellishing his ideas by the most apposite 
illustrations. Unfortunately, however, these have, hitherto, 
been frequently lost sight of through the reader's unacquaint- 
ance with that extensive field of folk-lore which was so well 
known to the poet. For the sake of easy reference, the 
birds with Avhich the present chapter deals are arranged al- 
phabetically. 

Barnaclc-Goosc. There was a curious notion, very preva- 
lent in former times, that this bird {Anscr bcrnicla) was gen- 
erated from the barnacle {Lcpas anatifira),^, shell-fish, grow- 
ing on a flexible stem, and adhering to loose timber, bottoms 
of ships, etc., a metamorphosis to which Shakespeare alludes 
in " The Tempest " (iv. i), where he makes Caliban say : 

7 



98 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

"we shall lose our time, 
And all be turn'd to barnacles." 



This vulgar error, no doubt, originated in mistaking the 
fleshy peduncle of the shell-fish for the neck of a goose, the 
shell for its head, and the tentacula for a tuft of feathers. 
These shell-fish, therefore, bearing, as seen out of the water, 
a resemblance to the goose's neck, were ignorantly, and with- 
out investigation, confounded with geese themselves. In 
France, the barnacle-goose may be eaten on fast days, by 
virtue of this old belief in its fishy origin.' Like other fic- 
tions this one had its variations," for sometime the barnacles 
were supposed to grow on trees, and thence to drop into the 
sea, and become geese, as in Drayton's account of Furness 
(" Polyolb." 1622, song 27, 1. 1 190). As early as the 12th cen- 
tury this idea^ was promulgated by Giraldus Cambrensis in 
his " Topographia Hiberniae." Gerarde, who in the year 
1597 published his " Herball, or Generall Historie of Plantes," 
narrates the following : " There are found in the north parts 
of Scotland, and the isles adjacent called Orcades, certain 
trees, whereon do grow certain shell-fishes, of a white color, 
tending to russet, wherein are contained little living creat- 
ures ; which shells in time of maturity do open, and out of. 
them grow those little living things which, falling into the 
water, do become fowls, whom we call barnacles, in the north 
of England brant geese, and in Lancashire tree geese ; but 
the others that do fall upon the land perish, and do come to 
nothing. Thus much of the writings of others, and also 
from the mouths of people of those parts, which may very 
well accord with truth. But what our eyes have seen and 
hands have touched, we shall declare. There is a small 
island in Lancashire called the Pile of Foulders, wherein are 
found the broken pieces of old ships, some whereof have 
been cast thither by shipwreck, and also the trunks or bodies, 

'SeeHarland and Wilkinson's" Lancashire Folk-Lore," 1867, pp. 116- 
121 ; "Notes and Queries," ist series, vol. viii. p. 224; "Penny Cyclo- 
paedia," vol. vii. p. 206, article " Cirripeda." 
Nares's " Glossary," 1872, vol. i. p. 56. 

^ See Harting's " Ornithology of Shakespeare," 187 1, pp. 246-257. 



BIRDS. gg 

with the branches, of old rotten trees, cast up there Hkcwisc, 
whereon is found a certain spume or froth, that in time 
breedetii into certain shells, in shape like those of the mus- 
sel, but sharper pointed, and of a whitish color; wherein is 
contained a thing in form like a lace of silk, one end whereof 
is fastened unto the inside of the shell, even as the fish of 
oysters and mussels are. The other end is made fast unto 
the belly of a rude mass or lump, which in, time cometh to 
the shape and form of a bird ; when it is perfectly formed 
the shell gapeth open, and the first thing that appeareth is 
the foresaid lace or string; next come the legs of the bird 
hanging out, and as it groweth greater it openeth the shell 
by degrees, till at length it is all come forth and hangeth 
only by the bill. In short space after it cometh to full ma- 
turity, and falleth into the sea, where it gathereth feathers 
and groweth to a fowl, bigger than a mallard, and lesser than 
a goose; having black legs and bill, or beak, and feathers 
black and white, spotted in such a manner as is our magpie, 
which the people of Lancashire call by no other name than 
a tree goose." An interesting cut of these birds so growing 
is given by Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps from a manuscript of the 
14th century, who is of opinion that the barnacle mentioned 
by Caliban was the tree-goose. It is not to be supposed, 
however, that there were none who doubted this marvellous 
story, or who took steps to refute it. Belon, so long ago as 
1551, says Mr. Harting,' and others after him, treated it with 
ridicule, and a refutation may be found in Willughby's "■ Or- 
nithology," which was edited by Ray in 1678." This vulgar 
error is mentioned by many of the old writers. Thus Bishop 
Hall, in his " Virgidemiarum " (lib. iv. sat. 2), says: 

"The Scottish barnacle, if I might choose, 
That of a worme doth waxe a \vinged goose." 



' "Ornithology of Shakespeare," i87i,p. 252. 

- See " Philosophical Transactions" for 1835 ; Darwin's "Monograph 
01 the Cirrhipedia," published by the Ray Society; a paper by Sir J. 
Emerson Tennent in "Notes and Queries," ist series, vol. viii. p. 223; 
Brand's " Popular Antiquities,'' 1849, vol. iii. pp. 361, 362 ; Douce 's " Il- 
lustrations of Shakespeare," 1839, p. 14. 

LOFC. 



100 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

Butler, too, in his " Hudibras" (III. ii. 1. 655), speaks of it ; 
and Marston,ia his " Malecontent " (1604), has the following : 
" Like your Scotch barnacle, now a block, instantly a worm, 
and presently a great goose." 

Blackbird. This favorite is called, in the " Midsummer- 
Night's Dream " (iii. i) an ousel (old French, oiscl), a term 
still used in the neighborhood of Leeds : 

" The ousel cock, so black of hue, 
With orange-tawny bill." 

In "2 Henry IV." (iii. 2) when Justice Shallow inquires 
of Justice Silence, " And how doth my cousin?" he is an- 
swered : *' Alas, a black ousel," cousin Shallow," a phrase 
which, no doubt, corresponded to our modern one, " a black 
sheep." In Spenser's '* Epithalamium " (1. 82), the word oc- 
curs : 

" The ousel shrills, the ruddock warbles soft." 

Buzzard. Mr. Staunton suggests that in the following 
passage of the "Taming of the Shrew" (ii. i) a play is in- 
tended upon the words, and that in the second line " buz- 
zard " means a beetle, from its peculiar buzzing noise : 

" Pet. O slow-wing'd turtle ! shall a buzzard take thee ? 
Kath. Ay, for a turtle, as he takes a buzzard." 

The beetle was formerly called a buzzard ; and in Stafford- 
shire, a cockchafer is termed a hum-buz. In Northampton- 
shire we find a proverb, " I'm between a hawk and a buz- 
zard," which means, " I don't know what to do, or how to 
act."' 

Chaffinch. Some think that this bird is alluded to in the 
song in the " Midsummer-Night's Dream" (iii. i), where the 
expression " finch " is used ; the chaffinch having always 



* See Yarrell's " History of British Birds," 2d edition, vol. i. p. 218; 
"Dialect of Leeds," 1862, p. 329. In " Hamlet" (iii. 2), some modern 
editions read "ouzle ;" the old editions all have weasel, which is now 
adopted. 

"^ Miss Baker's " Northamptonshire Glossary," 1854, vol. i. p. 94. See 
Nares's "Glossary,"' 1872, vol. i. p. 124; and " Richard HL," i. i. 



BIRDS. 



lOI 



been a favorite cage-bird with the lower classes.' In " Troilus 
and Cressida" (v. i) Thersites calls Patroclus a " finch-egg," 
which was evidently meant as a term of reproach. Others, 
again, consider the phrase as equivalent to coxcomb. 

Chough. In using this word Shakespeare probably, in 
most cases, meant the jackdaw;'' for in "A Midsummer- 
Night's Dream" (iii. 2) he says: 

" russet-pated choughs, many in sort, 
Rising and cawing at the gun's report ;" 

the term russet-pated being applicable to the jackdaw, but 
not to the real chough. In " i Henry IV." (v. i), Prince Henry ^^ 
calls Falstaff cliczvct — "Peace, chewet, peace" — in allusion, 
no doubt, to the chough or jackdaw, for common birds have 
always had a variety of names.^ Such an appellation would 
be a proper reproach to Falstaff, for his meddling and im- 
pertinent talk. Steevens and Malone, however, finding that 
chczvcts were little round pies made of minced meat, thought 
that the Prince compared Falstaff, for his unseasonable chat- 
tering, to a minced pie. Cotgrave* describes the French 
cJioiicttc as an owlet ; also, a " chough," which many consid- 
er to be the simple and satisfactory explanation of chciuct. 
Belon, in his " History of Birds" (Paris, 1855), speaks of the 
clioucttc as the smallest kind of chough or crow. Again, in 
" I Henry IV." (ii. 2), in the amusing scene where Falstaff, 
with the Prince and Poins, meet to rob the travellers at Gads- 



' Harting's "Ornithology of Shakespeare," p. 144; Hallivvell-Phil- 
lipps's "Handbook Index to Shakespeare," 1866, p. 187. The term 
finch, also, according to some, may mean either the bullfinch or gold- 
finch. 

''■ See Yarrell's " History of British Birds," 2d edition, vol. ii. p. 58. 

" Nares's " Glossary," vol. i. p. 156; Singer's " Shakespeare," 1875, vol. 
V. p. 115; Dyce's " Glossary," 1876, p. I'j. 

* Mr. Dyce says that if Dr. Latham had been acquainted with the 
article " Chouctte," in Cotgravc, he would not probably have suggested 
that Shakespeare meant here the lapwing or pewit. Some consider 
the magpie is meant. See Halliwell-Phillipps's " Handbook Index to 
Shakespeare," 1866, p. 83. Professor Newton would read "russet- 
patted," or " red-legged," thinking that Shakespeare meant the chough. 



102 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

hill, Falstaff calls the victims " fat chuffs," probably, says 
Mr. Harting, who connects the word with chough, from their 
strutting about with much noise. Nares,' too, in his explana- 
tion of chuff, says, that some suppose it to be from chough, 
which is similarly pronounced, and means a kind of sea-bird, 
generally esteemed a stupid one. Various other meanings 
are given. Thus, Mr. Gifford^ affirms that chuff is always 
used in a bad sense, and means " a coarse, unmannered clown, 
at once sordid and wealthy ;" and Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps 
explains it as spoken in contempt for a fat person.^ In 
Northamptonshire," we find the word chuff used to denote a 
person in good condition, as in Clare's " Village Minstrel :" 

"His chuflf cheeks dimpling in a fondling smile." 

Shakespeare alludes to the practice of teaching choughs 
to talk, although from the following passages he does not 
appear to have esteemed their talking powers as of much 
value ; for in "All's Well That Ends Well " (iv. i), he says; 
" Choughs' language, gabble enough, and good enough." 
And in "The Tempest" (ii. i), he represents Antonio as 
saying : 

" There be that can rule Naples 

As well as he that sleeps ; lords that can prate 

As amply and unnecessarily 

As this Gonzalo ; I myself could make 

A chough of as deep chat." 

Shakespeare always refers to the jackdaw as the," daw." ^ 
The chough or jackdaw was one of the birds considered 
ominous by our forefathers, an allusion to which occurs in 
" Macbeth " (iii. 4) : 



, 1 " Glossary," vol. i. p. 162 ; Singer's " Notes to Shakespeare," 1875, 
vol. v. p. 42. 

- Massinger's Works, 1813, vol. i. p. 281. 

'■' ■' Handbook Index to Shakespeare," 1866, p. 86. 

\ Miss Baker's " Northamptonshire Glossary," 1854, vol. i. p. 116. 

^ " Coriolanus," iv. 5 ; " Troilus and Cressida." i. 2 ; " Much Ado 
About Nothing," ii. 3 ; " Twelfth Night," iii. 4 ; " Love's Labour's Lost," 
V. 2, song ; " I Henry VI." ii. 4. 



BIRDS. 103 

" Augurs and understood relations have, 
By magot-pies and choughs and rooks brought forth 
The secret'st man of blood." 

At the present day this bird is not without its folk-lore, 
and there is a Norwich rhyme to the following effect :' 

" When three daws are seen on St. Peter's vane together, 
Then we're sure to have bad weather." 

In the north of England; too, the flight of jackdaws down 
the chimney is held to presage death. 

Cock. The beautiful notion which represents the cock as 
crowing all night long on Christmas Eve, and by its vigilance 
dispelling every kind of malignant spirit ' and evil influence > 
is graphically mentioned in " Hamlet " (i. i), where Marcel- 
lus, speaking of the ghost, says : 

" It faded on the crowing of the cock. 
Some say, that ever 'gainst that season comes 
Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated, 
The bird of dawning singeth all night long . 
And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad ; 
The nights are wholesome ; then no planets strike, 
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm. 
So hallow'd and so gracious is the time." 

In short, there is a complete prostration of the powers of 
darkness ; and thus, for the time being, mankind is .said to 
be released from the influence of all those evil forces which 
otherwise exert such sway. The notion that spirits fly at 
cock-crow is very ancient, and is mentioned by the Chris- 
tian poet Prudentius, who flourished in the beginning of the 
fourth century. There is also a hymn, said to have been 
composed by St. Ambrose, and formerly used in the Salis- 
bury Service, which .so much resembles the following speech 
of Horatio (i. i), that one might almost suppose Shakespeare 
had seen it :^ 



' Swainson's " Weather- Lore," 1873, p. 240. 

"" Henderson's " Folk-Lore of Northern Counties," 1879. p. 48. 

» See Douce's " Illustrations of Shakespeare," p. 438- 

* See Ibid. 



104 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

"The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn, 
Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat 
Awake the god of day ; and, at his warning, 
Whether in sea or fire, in earth or air. 
The extravagant and erring spirit hies 
To his confine." 

This disappearance of spirits at cock-crow is further al- 
luded to (i. 2) :' 

" the morning cock crew loud. 
And at the sound it shrunk in haste away. 
And vanished from our sight." 

Blair, too, in his " Grave," has these graphic words : 

"the tale 
Of horrid apparition, tall and ghastly. 
That walks at dead of night, or takes his stand 
O'er some new-open'd grave, and, strange to tell, 
Evanishes at crowing of the cock." 

This superstition has not entirely died out in England, 
and a correspondent of "Notes and Queries"^ relates an 
amusing legend current in Devonshire: "Mr. N. was a 
squire who had been so unfortunate as to sell his soul to 
the devil, with the condition that after his funeral the fiend 
should take possession of his skin. He had also persuaded 
a neighbor to be present on the occasion of the flaying. On 
the death of Mr. N. this man went, in a state of great alarm, 
to the parson of the parish, and asked his advice. By him 
he was told to fulfil his engagement, but he must be sure 
and carry a cock into the church with him. On the night 
after the funeral the man proceeded to the church, armed 
with the cock, and, as an additional security, took up his 
position in the parson's pew. At twelve o'clock the devil 
arrived, opened the grave, took the corpse from the coffin, 
and flayed it. When the operation was concluded, he held 
the skin up before him and remarked, ' Well, 'twas not worth 

1 See Brand's "Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. ii. pp. 51-57; Hampson's 
" Medii Q^vi Kalendarium," vol. i. p. 84. 
- 1st series, vol. iii. p. 404. 



BIRDS. IQC 

coming for after all, for it is all full of holes !' As he said 
this the cock crew, whereupon the fiend, turning round to 
the man, exclaimed, ' If it had not been for the bird you 
have got there under your arm, I would have your skin too !' 
But, thanks to the cock, the man got home safe again." 
Various origins have been assigned to this superstition, 
which Hampson ' regards as a misunderstood tradition of 
some Sabaean fable. The cock, he adds, which seems by its 
early voice to call forth the sun, was esteemed a sacred solar 
bird ; hence it was also sacred to Mercury, one of the per- 
sonifications of the sun. 

A very general amusement, up to the end of the last cen- 
tury, was cock-fighting, a diversion of which mention is oc- 
casionally made by Shakespeare, as in " Antony and Cleo- 
patra (ii. 3) : 

" His cocks do win the battle still of mine, 
When it is all to nought." 

And again Hamlet says (v. 2) : 

" O, I die, Horatio; 
The potent poison quite o'er-crows my spirit" — 

meaning, the poison triumphs over him, as a cock over his 
beaten antagonist. Formerly, cock-fighting entered into the 
occupations of the old and young.' Schools had their cock- 
fights. Travellers agreed with coachmen that they were to 
wait a night if there was a cock-fight in any town through 
which they passed. When country gentlemen had sat long 
at table, and the conversation had turned upon the relative 
merits of their several birds, a cock-fight often resulted, as 
the birds in question were brought for the purpose into the 
dining-room. Cock-fighting was practised on Shrove Tues- 
day to a great extent, and in the time of Henry VH. seems 
to have been practised within the precincts of court. The 
earliest mention of this pastime in England is by Fitzste- 

' " Medii CEvi Kalendarium," vol. i. p. 85. 

^ Roberts's " Social History of Southern Counties of England," 1856, 
p. 431 ; see " British Popular Customs." 1876, p. 65. 



I06 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

phens, in 1 191. Happily, nowadays, cock-fighting is, by law, 
a misdemeanor, and punishable by penalty. One of the pop- 
ular terms for a cock beaten in a fight was " a craven," to 
which we find a reference in the " Taming of the Shrew" 
(ii.i): 

" No cock of mine ; you crow too like a craven." 

We may also compare the expression in " Henry V." (iv. 7) : 
" He is a craven and a villain else." In the old appeal or 
wager of battle,* in our common law, we are told, on the au- 
thority of Lord Coke, that the party who confessed himself 
wrong, or refused to fight, was to pronounce the word era- 
vent, and judgment was at once given against him. Singer* 
says the term may be satisfactorily traced from erant,ereant, 
the old French word for an act of submission. It is so writ- 
ten in the old metrical romance of " Ywaine and Gawaine " 
(Ritson,i. 133): 

" Or yelde the til us als creant." 

And in " Richard Coeur de Lion " (Weber, ii. 208) : 

" On knees he fel down, and cryde, creaunt." 

It then became eravant, ei'avent, and at lengtli eraven. 

In the time of Shakespeare the word eoek was used as a 
vulgar corruption or purposed disguise of the name of God, 
an instance of which occurs in " Hamlet " (iv. 5) : " By cock, 
they are to blame." This irreverent alteration of the sacred 
name is found at least a dozen times' in Heywood's " Ed- 
ward the Fourth," where one passage is, 

''Herald. Sweare on this booke, King Lewis, so help you God, 
You mean no otherwise then you have said. 

King Lewis. So helpe me Cock as I dissemble not." 

We find, too, other allusions to the sacred name, as in " cock's 
passion," " cock's body ;" as in " Taming of the Shrew " (iv. 

' Nares's " Glossary," 1872, vol. i. p. 203. 

"^ Singers "Shakespeare," 1875, vol. ix. p. 256; Halliwell-Phillipps's 
" Handbook Index to Shakespeare," p. 112. 
' Dyce's " Glossary to Shakespeare," p. 85. 



BIRDS. 107 

i) : " Cock's passion, silence !" A not uncommon oath, too, 
in Shakespeare's time was " Cock and pie " — cock referring 
to God, and pie being supposed to mean the service-book of 
the Romish Church ; a meaning which, says Mr. Dyce, seems 
much more probable than Douce's ' supposition that this 
oath was connected with the making of solemn vows by 
knights in the days of chivalry, during entertainments at 
which a roasted peacock was served up. It is used by Jus- 
tice Shallow (" 2 Henry IV.," v. i) : " By cock and pye, sir, 
you shall not away to-night." Wc may also compare the 
expression in the old play of" Soliman and Perseda " (1599) : 
" By cock and pye and mousefoot." Mr. Harting" says the 
" Cock and Pye " (/. r., magpie) was an ordinary ale-house 
sign, and may have thus become a subject for the vulgar to 
swear by. 

The phrase, " Cock-a-hoop " ' — which occurs in " Romeo 
'and Juliet " (i. 5), 

" You'll make, a mutiny among my guests ! 
You will set cock-a-hoop ! you'll be the man !" 

— no doubt refers to a reckless person, who takes the cock or 
tap out of a cask, and lays it on the top or hoop of the bar- 
rel, thus letting all the contents of the cask run out. For- 
merly, a quart pot was called a hoop, being formed of staves 
bound together with hoops like barrels. There were gener- 
ally three hoops to such a pot ; hence, in " 2 Hemy VI." 
(iv. 2), one of Jack Cade's popular reformations was to in- 
crease their number: "the three-hooped pot shall have ten 
hoops ; and I will make it felony to drink small beer." 
Some, however, consider the term Cock-a-hoop ^ refers to 
the boastful crowing of the cock. 

In " King Lear" (iii. 2) Shakespeare speaks of the "cata- 
racts and hurricanoes " as having 

" drenched our steeples, drowned the cocks !" 

I " Illustrations of Shakespeare,"' 1839, p. 290. 
=■ "Ornithology of Shakespeare," p. 171. 
^ It is also an ale-house sign. 
* See Dyce's " Glossary to Shakespeare," p. 85. 



I08 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

Vanes on the tops of steeples were in days gone by made in 
the form of a cock — hence weathercocks — and put up, in pa- 
pal times, to remind the clergy of watchfulness.' Apart, too, 
from symbolism, the large tail of the cock was well adapted 
to turn with the wind." ■ 

Cormorant. The proverbial voracity of this bird^ gave 
rise to a man of large appetite being likened to it, a sense 
in which Shakespeare employs the word, as in '' Coriolanus " 
(i. i) : " the cormorant belly ;" in " Love's Labour's Lost " 
(i. i): '^ cormorant devouring Time;" and in " Troilus and 
Cressida" (ii. 2) : "this cormorant war." "Although," says 
Mr. Harting,'' " Shakespeare mentions the cormorant in sev- 
eral of his plays, he has nowhere alluded to the sport of us- 
ing these birds, when trained, for fishing; a fact which is 
singular, since he often speaks of the then popular pas- 
time of hawking, and he did not die until some years after 
James L had made fishing with cormorants a fashionable 
amusement." 

Crozv. This has from the earliest times been reckoned a 
bird of bad omen ; and in " Julius Caesar " (v. i), Cassius, on 
the eve of battle, predicted a defeat, because, to use his own 

words: 

"crows and kites 
Fly o'er our heads and downward look on us, 
As we were sickly prey : their shadows seem 
A canopy most fatal, under which 
Our army lies, ready to give up the ghost." 

Allusions to the same superstition occur in " Troilus 
and Cressida " (i. 2) ; " King John " (v. 2), etc. Vergil (" Bu- 

' See " Book of Days," 1863, vol. i. p. 157. 
^ In " King Lear" (iv. 6), where Edgar says : 

" Yond tall anchoring bark, 
Diminished to her cock ; her cock, a buoy 
Almost too small for sight," 

the word "cock " is an abbreviation for cock-boat. 

^ For superstitions associated with this bird, see Brand's " Pop. An- 
tiq.," 1849. vol. iii. p. 218. 

* " Ornithology of Shakespeare," p. 260. 



BIRDS. 109 

colic," i. 18) mentions the croaking of the crow as a bad 

omen : 

" Scepe sinistra cava prsedixit ab ilice cornix." 

And Butler, in his '* Hudibras " (part ii. canto 3), remarks : 

" Is it not ominous in all countries, 
When crows and ravens croak upon trees." 

Even children, nowadays, regard with no friendly feelings 
this bird of ill-omen ;' and in the north of England there is 
a rhyme to the following effect : 

" Crow, crow, get out of my sight, 
Or else I'll eat thy liver and lights." 

Among other allusions made by Shakespeare to the 
crow may be noticed the crow-keeper — a person employed 
to drive away crows from the fields. At present,^ in all the 
midland counties, a boy set to drive aw^ay the birds is said 
to keep birds ; hence, a stuffed figure, now called a scare- 
crow, was also called a crow-keeper, as in " King Lear" (iv. 6) : 
" That fellow handles his bow like a crow-keeper." 

One of Tusser's directions for September is: 

" No sooner a-sowing, but out by-and-by, 
With mother or boy that alarum can cry : 
And let them be armed with a sling or a bow, 
To scare away pigeon, the rook, or the crow." 

In "Romeo and Juliet" (i. 4) a scarecrow seems meant: 

" Bearing a Tartar's painted bow of lath, 
Scaring the ladies like a crow-keeper.'' 

Among further references to this practice is that in 
" I Henry VI." (i. 4), where Lord Talbot relates that, when 
a prisoner in France, he was publicly exhibited in the mar- 
ket-place : 

" Here, said they, is the terror of the French, 
The scarecrow that affrights our children so." ^ 

' See "Folk-Lore Record," 1879, vol. i. p. 52; Henderson's "Folk- 
Lore of Northern Counties," 1879, pp. 25, 126, 277. 
^ Nares's " Glossary," vol. i. p. 208. 
^ Cf. " Henry IV.," iv. 2. 



no FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

And once more, in " Measure for Measure " (ii. i): 

" We must not make a scarecrow of the law, 
Setting it up to fear the birds of prey. 
And let it keep one shape, till custom make it 
Their perch and not their terror." 

The phrase " to pkick a crow " is to complain good-nat- 
uredly, but reproachfully, and to threaten retaliation/ It 
occurs in " Comedy of Errors " (iii. i) : " We'll pluck a crow 
together." Sometimes the wordpuUis substituted for pluck, 
as in Butler's " Hudibras" (part ii. canto 2): 

" If not, resolve before we go 
That you and I must pull a crow." 

The crow has been regarded as the emblem of darkness, 
which has not escaped the notice of Shakespeare, who, in 
" Pericles" (iv, introd.), speaking of the white dove, says: 

" With the dove of Paphos might the crow 
Vie feathers white."" 

Cuckoo. Many superstitions have clustered round the 
cuckoo, and both in this country and abroad it is looked 
upon as a mysterious bird, being supposed to possess the 
gift of second-sight, a notion referred to in " Love's Labour's 
Lost " (v. 2) : 

" Cuckoo, cuckoo :^ O word of fear, 
Unpleasing to a married ear." 

And again, in "A Midsummer-Night's Dream " (iii. i), Bot- 
tom sings: 

" The plain-song cuckoo gray. 
Whose note full many a man doth mark. 
And dares not answer nay." 

It is still a common idea that the cuckoo, if asked, will 



^ Miss Baker's " Northamptonshire Glossary," vol. ii. p. 161 ; Brand's 
" Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. iii. p. 393. 

= Cf. " Romeo and Juliet," i. 5. 

^ " A cuckold being called from the cuckoo, the note of that bird was 
supposed to prognosticate that destiny." — Nares's " Glossary," vol. i. 
p. 212. 



BIRDS. Ijl 

tell any one, by the repetition of its cries, how long he has 
to live. The country lasses in Sweden count the cuckoo's 
call to ascertain how many years they have to remain un- 
married, but they generally shut their ears and run away on 
hearing it a few times.' Among the Germans the notes of 
the cuckoo, when heard in spring for the first time, are con- 
sidered a good omen. C^esarius (1222) tells us of a con- 
\ertite who was about to become a monk, but changed his 
mind on hearing the cuckoo's call, and counting twenty-two 
repetitions of it. " Come," said he, " I have certainly twen- 
ty-two years still to live, and why should I mortify myself 
during all that time ? I will go back to the world, enjoy its 
delights for twenty years, and devote the remaining two to 
penitence."^ In England the peasantry salute the cuckoo 
with the following invocation : 

" Cuckoo, cherrjr-tree, 
Good bird, tell me. 
How many years have I to live " — 

the allusion to the cherry-tree having probably originated 
in the popular fancy that before the cuckoo ceases its song 
it must eat three good meals of cherries. Pliny mentions 
the belief that when the cuckoo came to maturity it de- 
voured the bird which had reared it, a superstition several 
times alluded to by Shakespeare. Thus, in "King Lear" 
(i. 4), the Fool remarks : 

" The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long, 
That it had its head bit off by its young." 

Again, in " i Henry IV." (v. i), Worcester says: 

" And being fed by us you used uc so 
As that ungentle gull, the cuckoo's bird, 
Useth the sparrow; did oppress our nest; 
Grew by our feeding to so great a bulk 
That even our love durst not come near your sight 
For fear of swallowing." 

' Engel's " Musical Myths and Facts," 1876, vol. i. p. 9. 
''See Kelly's "Indo-European Folk-Lore," 1863, p. 99; "English 
Folk-Lore," 1879, pp. 55-62. 



112 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

Once more, the opinion that the cuckoo made no nest of 
its own, but laid its eggs in that of another bird, is men- 
tioned in " Antony and Cleopatra " (ii. 6) : 

" Thou dost o'er-count me oi my father's house ; 
But, since the cuckoo builds not for himself. 
Remain in't as thou may'st." 

It has been remarked,' however, in reference to the common 
idea that the young cuckoo ill-treats its foster-mother, that 
if we watch the movements of the two birds, when the 
younger is being fed, we cannot much wonder at this piece 
of folk-lore. When the cuckoo opens its great mouth, the 
diminutive nurse places her own head so far within its pre- 
cincts that it has the exact appearance of a voluntary sur- 
render to decapitation. 

The notion' " which couples the name of the cuckoo with 
the character of the man whose wife is unfaithful to him 
appears to have been derived from the Romans, and is first 
found in the Middle Ages in France, and in the countries of 
which the modern language is derived from the Latin. But 
the ancients more correctly gave the name of the bird, not 
to the husband of the faithless wife, but to her paramour, 
who might justly be supposed to be acting the part of the 
cuckoo. They applied the name of the bird in whose nest 
the cuckoo's eggs were usually deposited—' carruca '—to the 
husband. It is not quite clear how, in the passage from 
classic to mediaeval, the application of the term was trans- 
ferred to the husband." In further allusion to this bird, we 
may quote the following from "All's Well That Ends Well " 

(i-3): 

" For I the ballad will repeat, 

Which men full true shall find, 
'/ Your marriage comes by destiny. 

Your cuckoo sings by kind." 

The cuckoo has generally been regarded as the harbinger 
of spring, and, according to a Gloucester rhyme : 

1 See Mary Howitt's "Pictorial Calendar of the Seasons," p. 155; 
Knight's " Pictorial Shakespeare," vol. i. pp. 225, 226. 
^ Chambers's " Book of Days," vol. i. p. 531. 



BIRDS. I I -> 

" The cuckoo comes in April, 
Sings a song in May; 
Then in June another tune. 
And then she flies away." 

Thus, in " i Henry IV." (iii. 2), the king, alluding to his pre- 
decessor, says : 

" So, when he had occasion to be seen. 
He was but as the cuckoo is in June, 
Heard, not regarded." 

In " Love's Labour's Lost " (v. 2) spring is maintained by 
the cuckoo, in those charming sonnets descriptive of the 
beauties of the country at this season. 

The word cuckoo has, from the earliest times, been used 
as a term of reproach ;' and Plautus'^ has introduced it on 
more than one occasion. In this sense we find it quoted by 
Shakespeare in " i Henry IV." (ii. 4) : " O' horseback, ye 
cuckoo." The term cuckold, too, which so frequently occurs 
throughout Shakespeare's plays, is generally derived from 
cuculus,^ from the practice already alluded to of depositing 
its eggs in other birds' nests. 

Domestic Foivl. In " The Tempest " {y. i), the word chick 
is used as a term of endearment : " My Ariel ; chick," etc. ; 
and in " Macbeth " (iv. 3) Macduff speaks of his children as 
"all my pretty chickens." In " Coriolanus " (v. 3), hen is 
applied to a woman : " poor hen, fond of no second brood ;" 
and in "Taming of the Shrew" (ii, i), Petruchio says: "so 
Kate will be my hen ;" and, once more, " i Henry IV." (iii. 3), 
Falstaff says, "How now. Dame Partlet the hen?" In 
" Othello " (i. 3) lago applies the term " guinea-hen " to 
Desdemona, a cant phrase in Shakespeare's day for a fast-' 
woman. 

Dove. Among the many beautiful allusions to this bird 



' See Brand's " Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. ii. p. 201. 

^ " Asinaria," v. i. 

^ Nares, in his "Glossary" (v-ol. i. p. 212), says: "Cuckold, perhaps, 
quasi zwcV-oo'^, i. e., one served ; /. e., forced to bring up a brood that 
is not his own." 



114 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



we may mention one in " Hamlet " (v. i), where Shakespeare 
speaks of the dove only laying two eggs :' 

"as patient as the female dove 
When that her golden couplets are disclosed." 

The young nestlings, when first disclosed, are only covered 
with a yellow down, and the mother rarely leaves the nest, 
in consequence of the tenderness of her young ; hence the 
dove has been made an emblem of patience. In " 2 Hen- 
ry IV," (iv. i), it is spoken of as the symbol of peace : 

" The dove and very blessed spirit of peace." 

Its love, too, is several times referred to, as in " Romeo and 
Juliet" (ii. i), "Pronounce but — love and dove ;" and in 
" I Henry VI." (ii. 2), Burgundy says: 

" Like to a pair of loving turtle-doves. 
That could not live asunder, day or night." 

This bird has also been regarded as the emblem of fidelity, 
as in the following graphic passage in " Troilus and Cres- 
sida" (iii. 2) : 

" As true as steel, as plantage to the moon, 
As sun to day, as turtle to her mate. 
As iron to adamant, as earth to the centre ;" 

and in " Winter's Tale " (iv. 4), we read : 

" turtles pair, 
" That never mean to part." 

Its modesty is alluded to in the "Taming of the Shrew" 
(ii. i) : " modest as the dove ;" and its innocence in " 2 Hen- 
ry VI." (iii. i) is mentioned, where King Henry says: 

" Our kinsman Glostcr is as innocent 
From meaning treason to our royal person 
As is the sucking lamb or harmless dove : 
The duke is virtuous, mild and too well given 
To dream on evil, or to work my downfall." 

The custom of giving a pair of doves or pigeons as a present 
' Singer's " Shakespeare," 1875, vol. ix. p. 294. 



BIRDS. 115 

or peace-offering is alluded to in " Titus Andronicus " (iv. 4), 
where the clown says, " God and Saint Stephen give you 
good den : I have brought you a letter and a couple of 
pigeons here ;" and Avhen Gobbo tried to find favor with 
Bassanio, in " Merchant of Venice" (ii. 2), he began by say- 
ing, " I have here a dish of doves, that I would bestow upon 
your worship." Shakespeare alludes in several places to the 
" doves of Venus," as in " Venus and Adonis :" 

" Thus weary of the world, away she [Venus] hies, 
And yokes her silver doves ; by whose swift aid 
Their mistress, mounted, through the empty skies 
In her light chariot quickly is conveyed ; 
Holding their course to Paphos, where their queen 
Means to immure herself and not be seen ;" 

and in " A Midsummer-Night's Dream " (i. i), where Hermia 
speaks of " the simplicity of Venus' doves." This will also 
explain, says Mr. Harting,' the reference to "the dove of 
Paphos," in "Pericles" (iv. Introd.). The towns of Old 
and New Paphos are situated on the southwest extremity 
of the coast of Cyprus. Old Paphos is the one generally re- 
ferred to by the poets, being the peculiar seat of the wor- 
ship of Venus, who was fabled to have been wafted thither 
after her birth amid the waves. The " dove of Paphos " 
may therefore be considered as synonymous with the " dove 
of Venus." 

Mahomet, we are told, had a dove, which he used to feed 
with wheat out of his ear ; when hungry, the dove lighted 
on his shoulder, and thrust its bill in to find its breakfast, 
Mahomet persuading the rude and simple Arabians that it 
was the Holy Ghost, that gave him advice.'' Hence, in 
" I Henry VI." (i. 2), the question is asked : 

" Was Mahomet inspired with a dove ?" 

Duck. A barbarous pastime in Shakespeare's time was 
hunting a tame duck in the water with spaniels. For the 

' " Ornithology of Shakespeare," pp. 190, 191. 

» Sir W. Raleigh's " History of the World," bk. i. pt. i. ch. 6. 



Il6 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

performance of this amusement' it was necessary to have 
recourse to a pond of water sufficiently extensive to give 
the duck plenty of room for making its escape from the 
dogs when closely pursued, which it did by diving as often 
as any of them came near it, hence the following allusion in 
"Henry V." (ii. 3): 

" And hold-fast is the only dog, my duck."" 

" To swim like a duck " is a common proverb, which oc- 
curs in " The Tempest " (ii. 2), where Trinculo, in reply to 
Stephano's question how he escaped, says : " Swam ashore, 
man, like a duck ; I can swim like a duck, I'll be sworn." 

Eagle. From the earliest time this bird has been associ- 
ated with numerous popular fancies and superstitions, many 
of which have not escaped the notice of Shakespeare. A 
notion of very great antiquity attributes to it the power of 
gazing at the sun undazzled, to which Spenser, in his " Hymn 
of Heavenly Beauty " refers : 

"And like the native brood of eagle's kind. 
On that bright sun of glory fix thine eyes." 

In " Love's Labour's Lost " (iv. 3) Biron says of Rosaline: 

^ " What peremptory eagle-sighted eye 

y Dares look upon the heaven of her brow, 

That is not blinded by her majesty?'" 

And in " 3 Henry VI." (ii. i) Richard says to his brother 
Edward : 

" Nay, if thou be that princely eagle's bird, 
Show thy descent by gazing 'gainst the sun." 

The French naturalist, Lacepede,* has calculated that the 
clearness of vision in birds is nine times more extensive than 

' Strutt's " Sports and Pastimes," 1876, p. 329. 

^ There is an allusion to the proverbial saying, " Brag is a good dog, 
but Hold-fast is a better." 

^ In the same scene we are told, 

" A lover's eyes will gaze an eagle blind." 

Cf. " Romeo and Juliet," iii. 5 ; " Richard IL," iii. 3. 
* Quoted by Harting, in " Ornithology of Shakespeare," p. 24. 



BIRDS. 



117 



that of the farthest-sighted man. The eagle, too, has always 
been proverbial for its great power of flight, and on this ac- 
count has had assigned to it the sovereignty of the feath- 
ered race. Aristotle and Pliny both record the legend of 
the wren disputing for the crown, a tradition which is still 
found in Ireland :' " The birds all met together one day, and 
settled among themselves that whichever of them could fly 
highest was to be the king of them all. Well, just as they 
were starting, the little rogue of a wren perched itself on the 
eagle's tail. So they flew and flew ever so high, till the 
eagle was miles above all the rest, and could not fly another 
stroke, for he was so tired. Then says he, ' I'm the king 
of the birds,' says he; 'hurroo!' 'You lie,' says the wren, 
darting up a perch and a half above the big fellow. The 
eagle was so angry to think how he was outwitted by the 
wren, that when the latter was coming down he gave him a 
stroke of his wing, and from that day the wren has never 
been able to fly higher than a hawthorn bush." The swift- 
ness of the eagle's flight is sooken of in " Timon of Athens," 
(i.i): 

"an eagle flight, bold, and forth on. 
Leaving no tract behind."* 

The great age, too, of the eagle is well known ; and the 
words of the Psalmist are familiar to most readers: 

" His youth shall be renewed like the eagle's."' 

Apemantus, however, asks of Timon (" Timon of Athens," 
iv. 3): 

" will these moss'd trees. 
That have outlived the eagle, page thy heels. 
And skip when thou point'st out ?'' 

Turbervile, in his " Booke of Falconrie," 1575, says that 
the great age of this bird has been ascertained from the cir- 
cumstance of its always building its eyrie or nest in the same 

' Kelly's " Indo-European Folk-Lore," pp. 75, 79. 
' Cf. " Antony and Cleopatra,"' ii. 2 : " This was but as a fly by an 
eagle.'' 



Il8 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

place. The Romans considered the eagle a bird of good 
omen, and its presence in time of battle was supposed to 
foretell victory. Thus, in " Julius Caesar " (v. i) we read : 

" Coming from Sardis, on our former ensign 
Two mighty eagles fell ; and there they perch'd, 
Gorging and feeding from our soldiers' hands." 

It was selected for the Roman legionary standard,' through 
being the king and most powerful of all birds. As a bird 
of good omen it is mentioned also in " Cymbeline " (i. i) : 

" I chose an eagle, 
And did avoid a puttock ;" 

and in another scene (iv. 2) the Soothsayer relates how 

" Last night the very gods show'd me a vision, 

thus : — 

I saw Jove's bird, the Roman eagle, wing'd 
From the spungy south to this part of the west, 
There vanish'd in the sunbeams : which portends 
(Unless my sins abuse my divination), 
Success to the Roman host." 

The conscious superiority" of the eagle is depicted by Ta- 
mora in " Titus Andronicus " (iv. 4) : 

"The eagle suffers little birds to sing, 
And is not careful what they mean thereby. 
Knowing that with the shadow of his wing, 
He can at pleasure stint their melody." 

Goose. This bird was the subject ^ of many quaint pro- 
verbial phrases often used in the old popular writers. Thus, 
a tailor s goose was a jocular name for his pressing-iron, prob- 
ably from its being often roasting before the fire, an allusion 
to which occurs in " Macbeth" (ii. 3) : " come in, tailor ; here 
you may roast your goose." The "wild-goose chase," 
which is mentioned in "Romeo and Juliet" (ii. 4) — "Nay, 
if thy wits run the wild-goose chase, I have done " — wa^ 

1 Josephus, " De Bello Judico," iii. 5. 

^ Harting's *' Ornithology of Shakespeare," p. 33. 

' Nares's " Glossary," vol. i. p. 378. 



BIRDS. no 

a kind of horse-race, which resembled the flight of wild 
geese. Two horses were started together, and whichever 
rider could get the lead, the other was obliged to follow 
him over whatever ground the foremost jockey chose to 
go. That horse which could distance the other won the 
race. This reckless sport is mentioned by Burton, in his 
"Anatomy of Melancholy," as a recreation much in vogue 
in his time among gentlemen. The term " Winchester 
goose " was a cant phrase for a certain venereal disease, be- 
cause the stews in Southwark were under the jurisdiction 
of the Bishop of Winchester, to whom Gloster tauntingly 
applies the term in the following passage (" i Henry VI.," 

i.3): 

" Winchester goose ! I cry — a rope I a rope !" 

In " Troilus and Cressida" (v. lo) there is a further allusion : 

" Some galled goose of Winchester would hiss." 

Ben Jonson ' calls it : 

" the Winchestrian goose, 
Bred on the banke in time of Popery, 
When Venus there maintain'd the mystery." 

" Plucking geese " was formerly a barbarous sport of boys 
("Merry Wives of Windsor," v. i), which consisted in strip- 
ping a living goose of its feathers.^ 

In "Coriolanus" (i. 4), the goose is spoken of as the em- 
blem of cowardice. Marcius says : 

" You couls of geese, 
That bear the shapes of men, how have you run 
From slaves that apes would beat !" 

Goldfinch. The Warwickshire name' for this bird is 
" Proud Tailor," to which, some commentators think, the 
words in " i PIcnry IV." (iii. i) refer: 

"Lady P. I will not sing. 
Hotsp. 'Tis the next way to turn tailor, or be red-breast teacher." 

1 " Execration against Vulcan," 1640, p. 37. 
"^ Singer's " Notes," 1875, vol. i. p. 283. 
' Sec " Archaeologia," vol. iii. p. 33. 



120 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

It has, therefore, been suggested that the passage should be 
read thus : " Tis the next way to turn tailor, or red-breast 
teacher," i. e., " to turn teacher of goldfinches or redbreasts." ' 
Singer,' however, explains the words thus : " Tailors, like 
weavers, have ever been remarkable for their vocal skill. 
Percy is jocular in his mode of persuading his wife to sino-; 
and this is a humorous turn which he gives to his argument, 
' Come, sing.' ' I will not sing.' ' 'Tis the next [/. r., the 

readiest, nearest] way to turn tailor, or redbreast teacher' 

the meaning being, to sing is to put yourself upon a level 
with tailors and teachers of birds." 

Gull. Shakespeare often uses this word as synonymous 
with fool. Thus in " Henry V." (iii. 6) he says : 

" Why, 'tis a gull, a fool." 

The same play upon the word occurs in "Othello" (v. 2), 
and in " Timon of Athens" (ii. i). In "Twelfth Night" 
(v. i) Malvolio asks : 

" Why have you suffer'd me to be imprison'd. 
Kept in a dark house, visited by the priest. 
And made the most notorious geek and gull 
That e'er invention played on ? tell me why." 

It is also used to express a trick or imposition, as in " Much 
Ado About Nothing" (ii. 3): "I should think this a gull, 
but that the white-bearded fellow speaks it.'" "Gull- 
catchers," or " gull-gropers," to which reference is made in 
" Twelfth Night" (ii. 5), where Fabian, on the entry of Maria, 
exclaims: "Here comes my noble gull-catcher," were the 
names by which sharpers' were known in Shakespeare's 



' Nares's "Glossary," vol. ii. p. 693. Some think that the bullfinch 
is meant. 

"" Singer's " Notes," 1875, vol. v. p. 82 ; see Dyce's " Glossary," p. 433. 

=* Some doubt exists as to the derivation of gitH. Nares says it is 
from the old French guillcr. Tooke holds that gull, guile, wile, and 
guilt are all from the Anglo-Saxon " wiglian, gewiglian," that by which 
any one is deceived. Harting's " Ornithology of Shakespeare," p. 267. 

* See D'Israeli's "Curiosities of Literature," vol. iii. p. 84. 



BIRDS. 121 

time.' The "gull-catcher" was generally an old usurer, 
who lent money to a gallant at an ordinary, who had been 
unfortunate in play.^ Decker devotes a chapter to this 
character in his " Lanthornc and Candle-light," 1612. Ac- 
cording to him, " the gull-groper is commonly an old mony- 
monger, who having travailed through all the follyes of the 
world in his youth, knowes them well, and shunnes them in 
his age, his whole felicitie being to fill his bags with golde 
and silver." The person so duped was termed a gull, and 
the trick also. In that disputed passage in " The Tempest" 
(ii. 2), where Caliban, addressing Trinculo, says : 

"sometimes I'll get thee 
Young scamels from the rock." 

some think that the sea-mew, or sea-gull, is intended,^ sea- 
mall, or sea-mell, being still a provincial name for this bird. 
Mr. Stevenson, in his " Birds of Norfolk " (vol. ii. p. 260), tells 
us that "the female bar-tailed godwit is called a 'scammcU' 
by the gunners of Blakeney. But as this bird is not a rock- 
breeder,'' it cannot be the one intended in the present pas- 
sage, if we regard it as an accurate description from a natu- 
ralist's point of view." Holt says that "scam" is a limpet, 
and scamell probably a diminutive. Mr. Dyce^ reads " scam- 
els," /. c, the kestrel, stannel, or windhover, which breeds in 
rocky situations and high cliffs on our coasts. He also 
further observes that this accords well with the context 
" from the rock," and adds that staniel or stannyel occurs in 
"Twelfth Night" (ii. 5), where all the old editions exhibit 
the gross misprint " stallion." 

Hazuk. The diversion of catching game with hawks was 
\'cry popular in Shakespeare's time," and hence, as might be 

' See Thornbury's " Shakespeare's England," vol. i. pp. 311-322. 

• Nares's " Glossary," vol. i. p. 394. 

^ Harting's " Ornithology of Shakespeare," p. 269. 

'- Aldis Wright's "Notes to The Tempest, 1875, pp. 120, 121. 

* See Dj^ce's " Shakespeare," vol. i. p. 245. 

^ See Strutt's " Sports and Pastimes," 1876, pp. 60-97, and " Book of 
Days," i863,vol.ii. pp. 211-213; Smith's " Festivals, Games, and Amuse- 
ments," 1831, p. 174. 



122 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

expected, we find many scattered allusions to it throughout 
his plays. The training of a hawk for the field was an es- 
sential part of the education of a young Saxon nobleman ; 
and the present of a well-trained hawk was a gift to be wel- 
comed by a king. Edward the Confessor spent much of his 
leisure time in either hunting or hawking; and in the reign 
of Edward III. we read how the Bishop of Ely attended the 
service of the church at Bermondsey, Southwark, leaving his 
hawk in the cloister, which in the meantime was stolen — the 
bishop solemnly excommunicating the thieves. On one oc- 
casion Henry VIII. met with a serious accident when pur- 
suing his hawk at Hitchin, in Hertfordshire. In jumping 
over a ditch his pole broke, and he fell headlong into the 
muddy water, whence he was with some difficulty rescued by 
one of his followers. Sir Thomas More, writing in the reign 
of Henry VIII., describing the state of manhood, makes a 
young man say : 

" Man-hod I am, therefore I me delyght 
To hunt and hawke, to nourish up and fede 
The greyhounde to the course, the hawke to th' flight, 
And to bestryde a good and lusty stede." 

In noticing, then, Shakespeare's allusions to this sport, we 
have a good insight into its various features, and also gain a 
knowledge of the several terms associated with it. Thus 
frequent mention is made of the word "haggard" — a wild, 
untrained hawk — and in the following allegory (" Taming of 
the Shrew," iv. i), where it occurs, much of the knowledge 
of falconry is comprised : 

" My falcon now is sharp, and passing empty ; 
And, till she stoop, she must not be full-gorged,' 
For then she never looks upon her lure. 
Another way I have to man my haggard, 
To make her come, and know her keeper's call ; 
That is, to watch her, as we watch these kites 
That bate, and beat, and will not be obedient. 

' " A hawk full-fed was untractable, and refused the lure — the lure 
being a thing stuffed to look like the game the hawk was to pursue ; 
its lure was to tempt him back after he had flown." 



BIRDS. 123 

She eat no meat to-day, nor none shall eat ; 

Last night she slept not, nor to-night she shall not."» 

Further allusions occur in "Twelfth Night" (iii. i), where 
Viola says of the Clown : 

" This fellow is wise enough to play the fool ; 
And to do that well craves a kind of wit : 
He must observe their mood on whom he jests, 
The quality of persons, and the time ; 
And, like the haggard, check at every feather 
That comes before his eye." 

In "Much Ado About Nothing" (iii. i), Hero, speaking 
of Beatrice, says that : 

" her spirits are as coy and wild 
As haggards of the rock." 

And Othello (iii. 3), mistrusting Desdemona, and likening 
her to a hawk, exclaims : 

" if I do prove her haggard, — 
I'd whistle her off."" 

The word " check " alluded to above was a term in falconry 
applied to a hawk when she forsook her proper game and 
followed some other of inferior kind that crossed her in her 
flight^ — being mentioned again in " Hamlet" (iv. 7), where 
the king says : 

" If he be now return'd 
As checking at his voyage."* 

Another common expression used in falconry is " tower," 



' In the same play (iv. 2) Hortensio describes Bianca as " this proud 
disdainful haggard." See Dyce's "Glossary," p. 197; Cotgrave's 
" French and English Dictionary," sub. " Hagard ;" and Latham's 
" Falconry," etc., 1658. 

^ " To whistle off," or dismiss by a whistle ; a hawk seems to have 
been usually sent off in this way against the wind when sent in pursuit 
of prey. 

^ Dyce's "Glossary," p. 77 ; see "Twelfth Night," ii. 5. 

* The use of the word is not quite the same here, because the voyage 
was Hamlet's " proper game," which he abandons. " Notes to Ham- 
let," Clark and Wright, 1S76, p. 205. 



124 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

applied to certain hawks, etc., which tower aloft, soar spirally 
to a height in the air, and thence swoop upon their prey. 
In " Macbeth " (ii. 4) we read of 

"A falcon, towering in her pride of place ;" 
in " 2 Henry VI." (ii. i) Suffolk says, 

" My lord protector's hawks do tower so well ;" 
and in " King John " (v. 2) the Bastard says, 

" And like an eagle o'er his aery' towers." 

The word " quarry," which occurs several times in Shake- 
speare's plays, in some instances means the "game or prey 
sought." The etymology has, says Nares, been variously 
attempted, but with little success. It may, perhaps, origi- 
nally have meant the square, or enclosure {carrce), into which 
the game was driven (as is still practised in other countries), 
and hence the application of it to the game there caught 
would be a natural extension of the term. Randle Holme, 
in his "Academy of Armory" (book ii. c. xi. p. 240), defines 
it as " the fowl which the hawk flyeth at, whether dead or 
alive." It was also equivalent to a heap of slaughtered game, 
as in the following passages. In "Coriolanus" (i. i), Caius 
Marcius says : 

" I'd make a quarry 
With thousands of these quarter'd slaves." 

In "Macbeth" (iv. 3)" we read "the quarry of these mur- 
der'd deer;" and in " Hamlet" (v. 2), " This quarry cries on 
havock." 

Another term in falconry is " stoop," or " swoop," denot- 

' See Dyce's " Glossary," p. 456 ; Harting's " Ornithology of Shake- 
speare," p. 39 ; Tuberville's " Booke of Falconrie," 161 1, p. 53. 
^ Also in i. 2 we read : 

" And fortune, on his damned quarrel smiling, 
Show'd like a rebel's whore." 

Some read " quarry ;" see " Notes to Macbeth," Clark and Wright, 
p. l^j. It denotes the square-headed bolt of a cross-bow ; see Douce's 
" Illustrations," 1839, p. 227 ; Nares's "Glossary," vol. ii. p. 206. 



BIRDS. 125 

ing the hawk's violent descent from a height upon its prey. 
In " Taming of the Shrew " (iv. i) the expression occurs, " till 
she stoop, she must not be full-gorged." In "Henry V."(iv. i). 
King Henry, speaking of the king, says, " though his affec- 
tions are higher mounted than ours, yet, when they stoop, 
they stoop with the like wing." In " Macbeth " (iv. 3), too, 
Macduff, referring to the cruel murder of his children, ex- 
claims, " What ! ... at one fell swoop ?" ' Webster, in the 
" White Devil," ' says : 

" If she [/. e., Fortune] give aught, she deals it in small parcels, 
That she may take away all at one swoop." 

Shakespeare gives many incidental allusions to the hawk's 
trappings. Thus, in " Lucrece" he says : 

" Harmless Lucretia, marking what he tells 
With trembling fear, as fowl hear falcon's bells." 

And in " As You Like It " (iii. 3),^ Touchstone says, " As \j 
the ox hath his bow, sir, the horse his curb, and the falcon 
her bells, so man hath his desires." The object of these bells 
was to lead the falconer to the hawk when in a wood or out 
of sight. In Heywood's play entitled "A Woman Killed 
with Kindness," 1617, is a hawking scene, containing a strik- 
ing allusion to the hawk's bells. The dress of the hawk 
consisted of a close-fitting hood of leather or velvet, enriched 
with needlework, and surmounted with a tuft of colored 
feathers, for use as well as ornament, inasmuch as they as- 
sisted the hand in removing the hood when the birds for 
the hawk's attack came in sight. Thus in " Henry V." (iii. 7), 
the Constable of France, referring to the valor of the Dau- 
phin, says, "■ 'Tis a hooded valour ; and when it appears, it 
will bate."^ And again, in " Romeo and Juliet" (iii. 2), Ju- 
liet says : 



' See Spenser's " Fairy Queen," book i. canto xi. 1. 18 : 

" Low stooping with unwieldy sway." 

» Ed. Dyce, 1857, p. 5. = See " 3 Henry VI." i. i. 

* A quibble is perhaps intended between bate, the term of falconry, 
and abate, /. e., fall off, dwindle. " Bate is a term in falconry, to flutter 



126 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

" Hood my unmann'd ' blood, bating in my cheeks." 

The "jesses" were two short straps of leather or silk, which 
were fastened to each leg of a hawk, to which was attached 
a swivel, from which depended the leash or strap which the 
falconer" twisted round his hand. Othello (iii. 3) says: 

"Though that her jesses were my dear heart-strings." 

We find several allusions to the training of hawks. ^ They 
were usually trained by being kept from sleep, it having 
been customary for the falconers to sit up by turns and 
"watch" the hawk, and keep it from sleeping, sometimes 
for three successive nights. Desdemona, in " Othello " (iii. 3), 

says : 

" my lord shall never rest ; 
I'll watch him tame and talk him out of patience ; 
His bed shall seem a school, his board a shrift; 
I'll intermingle everything he does 
With Cassio's suit." 

So, in Cartwright's " Lady Errant " (ii. 2) : 

" We'll keep you as they do hawks, 
Watching until you leave your wildness." 

In " The Merry Wives of Windsor " (v. 5), where Page 
says, 

" Nay, do not fly : I think we have watch'd you now," 

the allusion is, says Staunton, to this method employed to 
tame or " reclaim" hawks. 

the wings as preparing for flight, particularly at the sight of prey. In 
' I Henry IV.' (iv. i) : 

" ' All plumed like estridges, that with the wind 
Bated, like eagles having lately bathed.' " 

- --Nares's " Glossary," vol. i. p. 60. 

' " Unmann'd" was applied to a hawk not tamed. 

* See Singer's "Notes to Shakespeare," 1875, vol. x. p. 86; Nares's 
" Glossary," vol. i. p. 448. 

^ See passage in "Taming of the Shrew," iv. i, already referred to, 
p. 122. 



BIRDS. 127 

Again, in " Othello" (iii. 3)/ lago exclaims: 

" She that, so young, could give out such a seeming, 
To seel her fathers eyes up close as oak ;" 

in allusion to the practice of seeling a hawk, or sewing up her 
eyelids, by running a fine thread through them, in order to 
make her tractable and endure the hood of which we have 
already spoken." King Henry (" 2 Henry IV." iii, i), in his 
soliloquy on sleep, says : 

" Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast 
Seal up the ship-boy's eyes, and rock his brains 
In cradle of the rude imperious surge." 

In Spenser's " Fairy Queen" (I. vii. 23), we read: 

" Mine eyes no more on vanity shall feed, 
But sealed up with death, shall have their deadly meed." 

It was a common notion that if a dove was let loose with 
its eyes so closed it would fly straight upwards, continuing 
to mount till it fell down through mere exhaustion.^ 

In "Cymbeline" (iii. 4), Imogen, referring to Posthumus, 

says : 

" I grieve myself 
To think, when thou shalt be disedged by her 
That now thou tir'st on," — 

this passage containing two metaphorical expressions from 
falconry. A bird was said to be disedged when the keenness 
of its appetite was taken away by tiring, or feeding upon 
some tough or hard substance given to it for that purpose. 
In " 3 Henry VI." (i. i), the king says: 

" that hateful duke. 
Whose haughty spirit, winged with desire. 
Will cost my crown, and like an empty eagle 
Tire on the flesh of me and of my son." 



' Also 'm same play, i. 3. 

- Turbervilc, in his "Booke of Falconrie," 1575, gives some curious 
directions as "how to seele a hawke ;" we may compare similar ex- 
pressions in "Antony and Cleopatra," iii. 13; v. 2. 

^ Nares's " Glossary," vol. ii. pp. "jtj, 778 ; cf. Beaumont and Fletcher, 
" Philaster," v. i. 



\/ 



128 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

Ill " Timon of Athens" (iii. 6), one of the lords says: 
" Upon that were my thouglits tiring, when we encoun- 
tered." 

In "Venus and Adonis," too, we find a further allusion: 

" Even as an empty eagle, sharp by fast, 
Tires with her beak on feathers, flesh, and bone," etc. 

Among other allusions to the hawk may be mentioned 
one in " Measure for Measure " (iii. i) : 

" This outward-sainted deputy. 
Whose settled visage and deliberate word 
Nips youth i' the head, and follies doth ejiiinew, 
As falcon doth the fowl " 

— the word "emmew" signifying the place where hawks 
were shut up during the time they moulted. In " Romeo 
and Juliet" (iii. 4), Lady Capulet says of Juliet : 

" To-night she's mew'd up to her heaviness ;" 

and in "Taming of the Shrew" (i. i), Gremio, speaking of 
Bianca to Signor Baptista, says : " Why will you mew her?" 
When the wing or tail feathers of a hawk were dropped, 
forced out, or broken, by any accident, it was usual to sup 
ply or repair as many as were deficient or damaged, an op- 
eration called "to imp' a hawk." Thus, in "Richard II." 
(ii. i), Northumberland says : 

" If, then, we shall shake off our slavish yoke. 
Imp out our drooping country's broken wing." 

So Massinger, in his " Renegado " (v. 8), makes Asambeg 

say : 

" strive to imp 
New feathers to the broken wings of time." 

Hawking was sometimes called birding.^ In the " Merry 
Wives of Windsor " (iii. 3) Master Page says : " I do invite 
you to-morrow mornin-g to my house to breakfast ; after, 

' Imp, from Anglo-Saxon, impan, to graft. Turbervile has a whole 
chapter on " The way and manner how to ympe a hawke's feather, 
howsoever it be broken or bruised." 

^ Harting's " Ornithology of Shakspeare," p. 72. 



I 



BIRDS. I2Q 

we'll a-birding together, I have a fine hawk for the bush." 
In the same play (iii. 5) Dame Quickly, speaking of Mistress 
Ford, says: "Her husband goes this morning a-birding;" 
and Mistress Ford says (iv. 2) : " He's a-birding, sweet Sir 
John." The word ha\yk, says Mr. Harting, is invariably 
used by Shakespeare in its generic sense ; and in only two 
instances does he allude to a particular species. These are 
the kestrel and sparrowhawk. In "Twelfth Night" (ii. 5) 
Sir Toby Belch, speaking of Malvolio, as he finds the letter 
which Maria has purposely dropped in his path, says: 

" And with what wing the staniel ' checks at it" 

— staniel being a corruption of stangdall, a name for the 
kestrel hawk." " Gouts" is the technical term for the spots 
on some parts of the plumage of a hawk, and perhaps Shake- 
speare uses the word in allusion to a phrase in heraldry. 
Macbeth (ii. i), speaking of the dagger, says : 

" I see thee still, ^^ 

And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood." 

Heron. This bird was frequently flown at by falconers. 
Shakespeare, in " Hamlet " (ii. 2), makes Hamlet say, " I am 
but mad north-north-west ; when the wind is southerly, I 
know a hawk from a handsaw ;" handsaw being a corrup- 
tion of " heronshaw," or " hernsew," which is still used, in 
the provincial dialects, for a heron. In Suffolk and Norfolk 
it is pronounced " harnsa," from which to " handsaw " is but 
a single step.^ Shakespeare here alludes to a proverbial 
saying, " He knows not a hawk from a handsaw."* Mr. J. 
C. Heath^ explains the passage thus: "The expression ob- 
viously refers to the sport of hawking. Most birds, espe- ' 

^ The reading of the folios here is stallion ; but the word wing, and 
the falconer's term checks, prove that the bird must be meant. See 
Nares's " Glossary," vol. ii. p. 832. 

* See kestrel and sparrowhawk. 

' " Notes to Hamlet," Clark and Wright, 1876, p. 159. 

* Ray's "Proverbs," 1768, p. 196. 

* Quoted in "Notes to Hamlet," by Clark and Wright, p. 159; see 
Nares's " Gloesary," vol. i. p. 416. 

9 



130 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

cially one of heavy flight like the heron, when roused by the 
falconer or his dog, would fly down or with the wind, in or- 
der to escape. When the wind is from the north the heron 
flies towards the south, and the spectator may be dazzled 
by the sun, and be unable to distinguish the hawk from the 
heron. On the other hand, when the wind is southerly the 
heron flies towards the north, and it and the pursuing hawk 
are clearly seen by the sportsman, who then has his back to 
the sun, and without difficulty knows the hawk from the 
hernsew." 

Jay. From its gay and gaudy plumage this bird has 
been used for a loose woman, as " Merry Wives of Wind- 
sor" (iii. 3): "we'll teach him to know turtles from jays," 
/. r., to distinguish honest women from loose ones. Again, 
in " Cymbeline " (iii. 4), Imogen says : 

" Some jay of Italy, 
Whose mother was her painting,' hath betray'd him." 

Kestrel. A hawk of a base, unserviceable breed," and 
therefore used by Spenser, in his " Fairy Queen " (II. iii. 4), 
to signify base : 

" Ne thought of honour ever did assay 
His baser breast, but in his kestrell kynd 
A pleasant veine of glory he did fynd." 

By some' it is derived from " coystril," a knave or peasant, 
from being the hawk formerly used by persons of inferior 
rank. Thus, in " Twelfth Night " (i. 3), we find " coystrill," 
and in " Pericles " (iv. 6) " coystrel." The name kestrel, 
says Singer,^ for an inferior kind of hawk, was evidently a 
corruption of the French qiiercclle or guereerelle, and orig- 
inally had no connection with coystril, though in later times 

' That is, made by art : the creature not of nature, but of painting; 
cf. " Taming of the Shrew," iv. 3 ; " The Tempest," ii. 2. 
^ Nares's " Glossary," vol. ii. p. 482. 
^ Harting's " Ornithology of Shakespeare," p. 74. 
* " Notes," vol. iii. pp. 357, 358. 



BIRDS. 



131 



they may have been confounded. HoHnshed' classes coi- 
sterels with lackeys and women, the unwarlike attendants 
on an army. The term was also given as a nickname to the 
emissaries employed by the kings of England in their French 
wars. Dyce'^ also considers kestrel distinct from coistrel. 

Kingfisher. It was a common belief in days gone by that 
during the days the halcyon or kingfisher was engaged in 
hatching her eggs, the sea remained so calm that the sailor 
might venture upon it without incurring risk of storm or 
tempest ; hence this period was called by Pliny and Aris- 
totle " the halcyon days," to w^hich allusion is made in " i 
Henry VI." (i. 2) : 

" Expect Saint Martin's summer, halcyon days." 

Dryden also refers to this notion : 

" Amidst our arms as quiet you shall be, 
As halcyons brooding on a winter's sea." 

Another superstition connected with this bird occurs in 
" King Lear" (ii. 2), where the Earl of Kent says: 

" turn their halcyon beaks 
With every gale and vary of their masters ;" 

the prevalent idea being that a dead kingfisher, suspended 
from a cord, would always turn its beak in that direction 
from whence the wind blew. Marlowe, in his "Jew of Mal- 
ta" (i. l), says: 

" But now how stands the wind ? 
Into what corner peers my halcyon's bill .■"' 

Occasionally one may still see this bird hung up in cot- 
tages, a remnant, no doubt, of this old superstition.^ 

Kite. This bird was considered by the ancients to be un- 
lucky. In " Julius Caesar" (v. i) Cassius says: 

" ravens, crows, and kites, 
Fly o'er our heads, and downward look on us." 

' " Description of England," vol. i. p. 162. 

* " Glossary to Shakespeare," p. 88. 

' Sir Thomas Browne's " Vulgar Errors," bk. iii. chap. 10. 



132 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



In " Cymbeline" (i. 2), too, Imogen says, 

" I chose an eagle. 
And did avoid a puttock," 

puttock, here, being a synonym sometimes applied to the 
kite.* Formerly the kite became a term of reproach from 
its ignoble habits. Thus, in "Antony and Cleopatra" (iii, 
13), Antony exclaims, "you kite!" and King Lear (i. 4) 
says to Goneril, " Detested kite ! thou liest." Its intractable 
disposition is alluded to in "Taming of the Shrew," by Pe- 
truchio (iv. i). A curious peculiarity of this bird is noticed 
in " Winter's Tale " (iv. 3), where Autolycus says: " My traf- 
fic is sheets; when the kite builds, look to lesser linen" — 
meaning that his practice was to steal sheets; leaving the 
smaller linen to be carried away by the kites, who will occa- 
sionally carry it off to line their nests.^ Mr. Dyce° quotes 
the following remarks of Mr. Peck on this passage : "Autoly- 
cus here gives us to understand that he is a thief of the 
first class. This he explains by an allusion to an odd vul- 
gar notion. The common people, many of them, think that 
if any one can find a kite's nest when she hath young, be- 
fore they are fledged, and sew up their back doors, so as 
they cannot mute, the mother-kite, in compassion to their 
distress, will steal lesser linen, as caps, cravats, ruffles, or any 
other such small matters as she can best fly with, from off 
the hedges where they are hanged to dry after washing, and 
carry them to her nest, and there leave them, if possible to 
move the pity of the first comer, to cut the thread and ease 
them of their misery." 

Lapzving. Several interesting allusions are made by Shake- 
speare to this eccentric bird. It was a common notion that 
the young lapwings ran out of the shell with part of it stick- 
ing on their heads, in such haste were they to be hatched. 
Horatio (" Hamlet," v. 2) says of Osric : " This lapwing runs 
away with the shell on his head." 

* Also to the buzzard, which see, p. 100. 

* Singer's " Shakespeare," vol. iv. p. 67, 
^ " Glossary," p. 243. 



BIRDS. 133 

It was, therefore, regarded as the symbol of a forward fel- 
low. Webster,' in the "White Devil" (1857, P- ^3)> says: 

" forward lapwing ! 
He flies with the shell en's head." 

The lapwing, like the partridge, is also said to draw pur- 
suers from her nest by fluttering along the ground in an op- 
posite direction or by crying in other places. Thus, in the 
" Comedy of Errors " (iv. 2), Shakespeare says : 

" Far from her nest the lapwing cries away." 

Again, in " Measure for Measure " (i. 4), Lucio exclaims: 

" though 'tis my familiar sin, 
With maids to seem the lapwing, and to jest, 
Tongue far from heart." 

Once more, in " Much Ado About Nothing" (iii. i), we read : 

" For look where Beatrice, like a lapwing, runs. 
Close by the ground, to hear our conference." 

Several, too, of our older poets refer to this peculiarity. 
In Ben Jonson's " Underwoods" (Iviii.) we are told: 

" Where he that knows will like a lapwing {\y, 
Farre from the nest, and so himself belie." 

Through thus alluring intruders from its nest, the lapwing 
became a sjmibol of insincerity ; and hence originated the 
proverb, " The lapwing cries tongue from heart," or, " The 
lapwing cries most, farthest from her nest." '" 

Lark. Shakespeare has bequeathed to us many exquisite 
passages referring to the lark, full of the most sublime pa- 
thos and lofty conceptions. Most readers are doubtless ac- 
quainted with that superb song in " Cymbeline " (ii. 3), where 
this sweet songster is represented as singing " at heaven's 
gate ;" and again, as the bird of dawn, it is described in 
"Venus and Adonis," thus: 

' " Glossary," vol. ii. p. 495 ; see Yarrell's " History of British Birds," 
2d edition, vol. ii. p. 482. 
* Ray's " Proverbs," 1768, p. 199. 



J 24 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

" Lo, here the gentle lark, weary of rest, 
From his moist cabinet mounts up on high, 
And wakes the morning, from whose silver breast 
The sun ariseth in his majesty." ' 

In *' Love's Labour's Lost " (v. 2, song) we have a graphic 
touch of pastoral life : 

" When shepherds pipe on oaten straws. 

And merry larks are ploughmen's clocks." 

The words of Portia, too, in " Merchant of Venice " (v. i), to 
sing " as sweetly as the lark," have long ago passed into a 
proverb. 

It was formerly a current saying that the lark and toad 
changed eyes, to which Juliet refers in " Romeo and Juliet" 

(iii.5): 

" Some say, the lark and loathed toad change eyes ;" 

Warburton says this popular fancy originated in the toad 
having very fine eyes, and the lark very ugly ones. This 
tradition was formerly expressed in a rustic rhyme: 

"to heav'n I'd fly. 
But that the toad beguil'd me of mine eye." 

In " Henry VIII." (iii. 2) the Earl of Surrey, in denouncing 
Wolsey, alludes to a curious method of capturing larks, 
which was effected by small mirrors and red cloth. These, 
scaring the birds, made them crouch, while the fowler drew 
his nets over them : 

" let his grace go forward, 
And dare us with his cap, like larks." 

In this case the cap was the scarlet hat of the cardinal, which 
it was intended to use as a piece of red cloth. The same 
idea occurs in Skelton's "Why Come Ye not to Court?" a 
satire on Wolsey : 

" The red hat with his lure 
Bringeth all things under cure." 

' Cf. " Midsummer- Night's Dream" (iv. i), "the morning lark;" 
" Romeo and Juliet" (iii. 5), "the lark, the herald of the morn." 



BIRDS. 125 

The words " tirra-lirra " (" Winter's Tale," iv. 3) arc a fan- 
ciful combination of sounds,' meant to imitate the lark's 
note ; borrowed, says Nares, from the French tire-lire. 
Browne, " British Pastorals " (bk. i. song 4), makes it " teery- 
leery." In one of the Coventry pageants there is the follow- 
ing old song sung by the shepherds at the birth of Christ, 
which contains the expression : 

"As I out rode this endenes night, 
Of three joli sheppards I sawe a syght, 
And all aboute there fold a stare shone bright. 
They sang terli terlovv, 
So mereli the sheppards their pipes can blow." 

In Scotland" and the north of England the peasantry say 
that if one is desirous of knowing what the lark says, he 
must lie down on his back in the field and listen, and he 
will then hear it say : 

" Up in the lift go we. 
Tehee, tehee, tehee, tehee ! 
There's not a shoemaker on the earth 
Can make a shoe to me, to me ! 
Why so, why so, why so .-* 
Because my heel is as long as my toe." 

Magpie. It was formerly known as magot-pie, probably 
from the French inagot, a monkey, because the bird chatters 
and plays droll tricks like a monkey. It has generally been 
regarded with superstitious awe as a mysterious bird,^ and 
is thus alluded to in " Macbeth" (iii,4): 

" Augurs and understood relations, have 
By magot-pies, and choughs, and rooks, brought forth 
The secret'st man of blood." 

And again, in " 3 Henry VI." (v. 6), it is said : 

"chattering pies in dismal discords sung." 

There are numerous rhymes* relating to the magpie, of 

' Nares's " Glossary," vol. ii. p. 886 ; Douce's " Illustrations of Shake- 
speare," 1839, p. 217. 

- Chambers's " Popular Rhymes of Scotland,"' 1870, p. 192. 

^ See " English Folk-Lorc," p. 81. 

* Henderson's " Folk-Lore of Northern Counties," p. 127. 



136 folk-lorp: of siiakespeare. 

which we subjoin, as a specimen, one prevalent in the north 

of England : 

" One is sorrow, two mirth, 
Three a wedding, four a birth, 
Five heaven, six hell. 
Seven the de'il's ain sell." 

In Devonshire, in order to avert the ill-luck from seeing a 
magpie, the peasant spits over his right shoulder three times, 
and in Yorkshire various charms are in use. One is to raise 
the hat as a salutation, and then to sign the cross on the 
breast ; and another consists in making the same sign by 
crossing the thumbs. It is a common notion in Scotland 
that magpies flying near the windows of a house portend a 
speedy death to one of its inmates. The superstitions asso- 
ciated with the magpie are not confined to this country, for 
in Sw^eden' it is considered the witch's bird, belonging to the 
evil one and the other powers of night. In Denmark, when 
a magpie perches on a house it is regarded as a sign that 
strangers are coming. 

]\Iartin. The martin, or martlet, which is called in " Mac- 
beth " (i. 6) the "guest of summer," as being a migratory 
bird, has been from the earliest times treated with supersti- 
tious respect — it being considered unlucky to molest or in 
any way injure its nest. Thus, in the "Merchant of Ven- 
ice " (ii. 9), the Prince of Arragon says : 

" the martlet 
Builds in the weather, on the outward wall, 
Even in the force and road of casualty." 

Forster^ says that the circumstance of this bird's nest be- 
ing built so close to the habitations of man indicates that it 
has long enjoyed freedom from molestation. There is a 
popular rhyme still current in the north of England : 

" The martin and the swallow 
Are God Almighty's bow and arrow." 



' Thorpe's " Northern Mythology," vol. ii. p. 34 ; Brand's " Pop. An- 
tiq.," 1849, pp. 215, 216; see also Harland and Wilkinson's "Lancachire 
Folk-Lore," 1867, pp. 143, 145. 

"^ "Atmospherical Researches," 1823, p. 262. 



BIRDS. 1^7 

A^ig/it2Hga/i\ The popular error that the nightingale sings 
with its breast impaled upon a thorn is noticed by Shake- 
speare, who makes Lucrece say : 

" And whiles against a thorn thou bear'st thy part 
To keep thy sharp woes waking." 

In the " Passionate Pilgrim " (xxi.) there is an allusion : 

/ " Everything did banish moan, 

Save the nightingale alone. 
She, poor bird, as all forlorn, 
Lean'd her breast up-till a thorn, 
And there sung the dolefull'st ditty, 
That to hear it was great pity." 

Beaumont and Fletcher, in "The Faithful Shepherdess" 
(v. 3), speak of 

"The nightingale among the thick-leaved spring, 
That sits alone in sorrow, and doth sing 
Whole nights away in mourning." 

Sir Thomas Browne' asks "Whether the nightingale's sit- 
ting with her breast against a thorn be any more than that 
she placeth some prickles on the outside of her nest, or 
roosteth in thorny, prickly places, where serpents may least 
approach her?"" In the "Zoologist" for 1862 the Rev. A, 
C. Smith mentions "the discovery, on two occasions, of a 
strong thorn projecting upwards in the centre of the nightin- 
gale's nest." Another notion is that the nightingale never 
sings by day; and thus Portia, in "Merchant of Venice" 

(v. i), says : 

" I think. 
The nightingale, if she should sing by day, 
When every goose is cackling, would be thought 
No better a musician than the wren." 

Such, however, is not the case, for this bird often sings as 
sweetly in the day as at night-time. There is an old super- 
stition' that the nightingale sings all night, to keep itself 

' Sir Thomas Browne's Works, 1853, vol. i. p. 378. 

^ See " Book of Days," vol. i. p. 515. 

^ Southey's "Commonplace Book," 5th series, 1851, p. 305. 



138 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

awake, lest the glowworm should devour her. The classical 
fable' of the unhappy Philomela turned into a nightingale, 
when her sister Progne was changed to a swallow, has doubt- 
less given rise to this bird being spoken of as she ; thus 
Juliet tells Romeo (iii. 5) : 

" It was the nightingale, and not the lark, 
That pierc'd the fearful hollow of thine ear ; 
Nightly she sings on yon pomegranate tree ; 
Believe me, love, it was the nightingale." 

Sometimes the nightingale is termed Philomel, as in " Mid- 
summer-Night's Dream " (ii. 2, song) : - 

"Philomel, with melody. 
Sing in our sweet lullaby.'' 

Osprcy. This bird,' also called the sea-eagle, besides hav- 
ing a destructive power of devouring fish, was supposed 
formerly to have a fascinating influence, both which qualities 
are alluded to in the following passage in "Coriolanus" 
(iv. 7) : 

" I think he'll be to Rome, 
As is the osprey to the fish, who takes it 
By sovereignty of nature." 

Drayton, in his " Polyolbion " (song xxv.), mentions the 
same fascinating power of the osprey: 

" The osprey, oft here seen, though seldom here it breeds, 
Which over them the fish no sooner do espy, 
But, betwixt him and them by an antipathy. 
Turning their bellies up, as though their death they saw, 
They at his pleasure lie, to stuff his gluttonous maw." 

Ostrich. The extraordinary digestion of this bird' is said 

> Ovid's " Metamorphoses," bk. vi. 11. 455-676 ; " Titus Andronicus," 
iv. I. 

- Cf. " Lucrece," 11. 1079, 11 27. 

' See Yarrell's " History of British Birds," 1856, vol. i. p. 30 ; Nares's 
"Glossary," vol. ii. p. 620; also Pennant's "British Zoology;" see 
Peek's Play of the " Battle of Alcazar" (ii. 3), 1861, p. 28. 

* Called cstridge in " i Henry IV." iv. i. } j 



BIRDS. j^g 

to be shown by its swallowing iron and other hard sub- 
stances.' In " 2 Henry VI." (iv. lo), the rebel Cade says to 
Alexander Iden : " Ah, villain, thou wilt betray me, and get 
a thousand crowns of the king by carrying my head to him ; 
but I'll make thee eat iron like an ostrich, and swallow my 
sword like a great pin, ere thou and I part." Cuvier," speak- 
ing of this bird, says, " It is yet so voracious, and its senses 
of taste and smell are so obtuse, that it devours animal and 
mineral substances indiscriminately, until its enormous 
stomach is completely full. It swallows without any choice, 
and merely as it were to serve for ballast, wood, stones, grass, 
iron, copper, gold, lime, or, in fact, any other substance equally 
hard, indigestible, and deleterious." Sir Thomas Browne,^ 
writing on this subject, says, " The ground of this conceit in 
its swallowing down fragments of iron, which men observing, 
b}' a forward illation, have therefore conceived it digesteth 
them, which is an inference not to be admitted, as being a 
fallacy of the consequent." In Loudon's " Magazine of Nat- 
ural History" (No. 6, p. 32) we are told of an ostrich having 
been killed by swallowing glass. 

Ozvl. The dread attached to this unfortunate bird is fre- 
quently spoken of by Shakespeare, who has alluded to sev- 
eral of the superstitions associated with it. At the outset, 
many of the epithets ascribed to it show the prejudice with 
which it was regarded — being in various places stigmatized 
as " the vile owl," in " Troilus and Cressida" (ii. i) ; and the 
" obscure bird," in " Macbeth" (ii. 3), etc. From the earliest 
period it has been considered a bird of ill-omen, and Plin)- 
tells us how, on one occasion, even Rome itself underwent a 
lustration, because one of them strayed into the Capitol. 
He represents it also as a funereal bird, a monster of the night, 
the very abomination of human kind. Vergil describes its 
death-howl from the top of the temple by night, a circum- 



' See Brand's " Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. iii. p. 365. 

- " Animal Kingdom," 1829, vol. viii. p. 427. 

^ See Sir Thomas Browne's Works, 1852, vol. i. pp. 334-337. 

* " iEneid," bk. iv. 1. 462. 



I40 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



stance introduced as a precursor of Dido's death. Ovid,' 
too, constantly speaks of this bird's presence as an evil omen ; 
and indeed the same notions respecting it may be found 
among the writings of most of the ancient poets. This su- 
perstitious awe in which the owl is held may be owing to 
its peculiar look, its occasional and uncertain appearance, its 
loud and dismal cry," as well as to its being the bird of 
night.' It has generally been associated with calamities and 
deeds of darkness.* Thus, its weird shriek pierces the ear of 
Lady Macbeth (ii. 2), while the murder is being committed : 

" Hark ! — Peace! 
It was the owl that shriek'd, the fatal bellman, 
Which gives the stern'st good night." 

And when the murderer rushes in, exclaiming, 

" I have done the deed. Didst thou not hear a noise ?" 

she answers : 

" I heard the owl scream." 

Its appearance at a birth has been said to foretell ill-luck to 
the infant, a superstition to which King Henry, in " 3 Henry 
VI." (v. 6), addressing Gloster, refers : 

"The owl shriek'd at thy birth, an evil sign." 

Its cries' have been supposed to presage death, and, to 
quote the words of the Spectator, ''a screech-owl at mid- 
night has alarmed a family more than a band of robbers." 
Thus, in " A Midsummer-Night's Dream" (v. i), we are told 

how 

" the screech-owl, screeching loud, 
Puts the wretch that lies in woe 
In remembrance of a shroud ;" 

and in " i Henry VI." (iv. 2), it is called the " ominous and 



' " Metamorphoses," bk. v. 1. 550 ; bk. vi. 1. 432 ; bk. x. 1. 453 ; bk. xv. 
1.791. 

^ " 2 Henry VI." iii. 2 ; iv. i. ' " Titus Andronicus," ii. 3. 

* Cf. " Lucrece," 1. 165 ; see Yarrell's " History of British Birds," vol. 
i. p. 122. 

^ See Brand's " Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. iii. p. 209. 



BIRDS. 141 

fearful owl of death." Again, in " Richard III." (iv. 4), where 
Richard is exasperated by the bad news, he interrupts the 
third messenger by saying : 

" Out on ye, owls ! nothing but songs of death ?" 

The owl by day is considered by some equally ominous, as 
in " 3 Henry VI." (v. 4) : 

" the owl by day, 
If he arise, is mock'd and wonder'd at." 

And in " Julius Caesar" (i. 3), Casca says: 

" And yesterday the bird of night did sit. 
Even at noon-day, upon the market-place, 
Hooting and shrieking. When these prodigies _- 

Do so conjointly meet, let not men say, 
' These are their reasons, — they are natural ;' 
For, I believe, they are portentous things 
Unto the climate that they point upon." 

Considering, however, the abhorrence with which the owl is 
generally regarded, it is not surprising that the " owlet's 
wing"' should form an ingredient of the caldron in which 
the witches in " Macbeth" (iv. i) prepared their " charm of 
powerful trouble." The owl is, too, in all probability, repre- 
sented by Shakespeare as a witch," a companion of the fairies 
in their moonlight gambols. In " Comedy of Errors " (ii. 2), 
Dromio of Syracuse says : 

" This is the fairy land : O, spite of spites ! ' 

We talk with goblins, owls, and elvish sprites. 
If we obey them not, this will ensue. 
They'll suck our breath, or pinch us black and blue !" 

Singer, in his Notes on this passage (vol. ii. p. 28) says: " It 
has been asked, how should Shakespeare know that screech- 
owls were considered by the Romans as witches ?" Do these 
cavillers think that Shakespeare never looked into a book ? 



' The spelling of the folios is " howlets."' In Holland's translatiori 
of Pliny (chap. xvii. book x.), we read " of owlls or howlets." Cotgrave 
gives " Hulotte." 

° Halliwell-Phillipps's, " Handbook Index." 1866. p. 354. 



142 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



Take an extract from the Cambridge Latin Dictionary (1594, 
8vo), probably the very book he used : " Strix, a scritche 
owle ; an unluckie kind of bird (as they of olde time said) 
which sucked out the blood of infants lying in their cradles ; 
a witch, that changeth the favour of children; an hagge or 
fairie." So in the " London Prodigal," a comedy, 1605 : 
"Soul, I think I am sure crossed or witch'd with an owl."' 
In "The Tempest" (v. i) Shakespeare introduces Ariel as 

saying : 

" Where the bee sucks, there suck 1, 
In a cowslip's bell I lie, 
There I couch when owls do cry." 

Ariel,^ who sucks honey for luxury in the cowslip's bell, re- 
treats thither for quiet when owls are abroad and screeching. 
According to an old legend, the owl was originally a baker's 
daughter, to which allusion is made in "Hamlet" (iv. 5), 
where Ophelia exclaims : " They say the owl was a baker's 
daughter. Lord ! we know what we are, but know not what 
we may be." Douce ^ says the following story was current 
among the Gloucestershire peasantry: "Our Saviour went 
into a baker's shop where they were baking, and asked for 
some bread to eat ; the mistress of the shop immediately 
put a piece of dough into the oven to bake for him ; but 
was reprimanded by her daughter, who, insisting that the 
piece of dough was too large, reduced it to a very small size ; 
the dough, however, immediately began to swell, and pres- 
ently became a most enormous size, whereupon the baker's 
daughter cried out, ' Heugh, heugh, heugh !' which owl-like 
noise probably induced our Saviour to transform her into 
that bird for her wickedness." Another version of the same 
story, as formerly known in Herefordshire, substitutes a fairy 
in the place of our Saviour. Similar legends are found on 
the Continent." 



I See Dyce's " Glossary," p. 302. 

^ See Singer's " Notes to The Tempest," 1875, vol. i. p. 82. 
' See Geitilemans Magazine, November, 1804, pp. 1083, 1084. 
Grimm's " Deutsche Mythologie." 
* See Dasent's "Tales of the Norse," 1859, p. 230. 



BIRDS. J43 

Parrot. The " popinjay," in " i Henry IV." (i. 3), is an- 
other name for the parrot — from the Spanish papagayo — a 
term which occurs in Browne's " Pastorals" (ii. 65): 

" Or like the mixture nature dothe display 
Upon the quaint wings of the popinjay." 

Its supposed restlessness before rain is referred to in "As 
You Like It " (iv. i) : " More clamorous than a parrot against 
rain." It was formerly customary to teach the parrot un- 
lucky words, with which, when any one was offended, it was 
the standing joke of the wise owner to say, " Take heed, sir, 
my parrot prophesies " — an allusion to which custom we find 
in "Comedy of Errors" (iv. 4), where Dromio of Ephesus 
says : " prophesy like the parrot, bczvarc the ropes cud!' To 
this Butler hints, where, speaking of Ralpho's skill in augury, 
he says : ' 

" Could tell what subtlest parrots mean, 
That speak and think contrary clean ; 
What member 'tis of whom they talk, 
When they cry rope, and ivalk, knave, walk." 

The rewards given to parrots to encourage them to speak 
are mentioned in " Troilus and Cressida" (v. 2):' "the par- 
rot will not do more for an almond." Hence, a proverb for 
the greatest temptation that could be put before a man 
seems to have been "An almond for a parrot." To "talk 
like a parrot " is a common proverb, a sense in which it oc- 
curs in " Othello" (ii. 3). 

Peacock. This bird was as proverbially used for a proud,! 
vain fool as the lapwing for a silly one. In this sense some; 
would understand it in the much-disputed passage in " Ham- 1 

let" (iii. 2): ' 

" For thou dost know, O Damon dear. 
This realm dismantled was 
Of Jove himself; and now reigns here 
A ver)^ very — peacock." ' 

' " Hudibras," pt. i. ch. i. 

=" In " Much Ado About Nothing" (i. i), Benedick likens Beatrice to 
a " parrot-teacher," from her talkati\-e powers. 
^ This is the reading adopted by Singer. 



144 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



The third and fourth folios xeTid pajock,^ the other editions 
have " paiock," " paiocke," or " pajocke," and in the later 
quartos the word was changed to " paicock " and " pecock," 
whence Pope printed peacock. 

Dyce says that in Scotland the peacock is called the pea- 
jock. Some have proposed to read paddock, and in the last 
scene Hamlet bestows this opprobrious name upon the king. 
It has been also suggested to read piittock, a kite.^ The pea- 
cock has also been regarded as the emblem of pride and ar- 
rogance, as in " I Henry VI." (iii. 3) :^ 

" Let frantic Talbot triumph for a while, 
And, like a peacock, sweep along his tail ; 
We'll pull his plumes, and take away his train." 

Pelican. There are several allusions by Shakespeare to 
the pelican's piercing her own breast to feed her young. 
Thus, in " Hamlet " (iv. 5), Laertes says : 

" To his good friends thus wide I'll ope my arms ; 
And like the kind life-rendering pelican, 
Repast them with my blood." 

And in '' King Lear," where the young pelicans are repre- 
sented as piercing their mother's breast to drink her blood, 
an illustration of filial impiety (iii. 4), the king says : 

" Is it the fashion, that discarded fathers 
Should have thus little mercy on their flesh ? 
ludicious punishment ! 'Twas this flesh begot 
Those pelican daughters." * 

It is a common notion that the fable here alluded to is a 
classical one, but this is an error. Shakespeare, says Mr. 
Harting, " was content to accept the story as he found it, and 
to apply it metaphorically as the occasion required." Mr. 
Houghton, in an interesting letter to "Land and Water"" 

» " Notes to Hamlet," Clark and Wright, 1876, pp. 179, 180. 

* See Nares's "Glossary," vol. ii. p. 645; Singer's "Notes," vol. i.\. 
p. 228. ^ Cf. " Troilus and Cressida," iii. 3. 

*Cf. "Richard II." i. i. 

* Mr. Harting, in his " Ornithology of Shakespeare," quotes an inter- 
esting correspondence from " Land and Water" (1869), on the subject. 



BIRDS. 145 

on this subject, remarks that the Egyptians believed in a 
bird feeding its young with its blood, and this bird is none 
other than the vulture. He goes on to say that the fable of 
the pelican doubtless originated in the Patristic annotations 
on the Scriptures. The ecclesiastical Fathers transferred the 
Egyptian story from the vulture to the pelican, but magni- 
fied the story a hundredfold, for the blood of the parent was 
not only supposed to serve as food for the young, but was 
also able to reanimate the dead offspring. Augustine, com- 
menting on Psalm cii. 6 — " I am like a pelican of the wilder- 
ness" — remarks: "These birds [male pelicans] are said to 
kill their offspring by blows of their beaks, and then to be- 
wail their death for the space of three days. At length, 
however, it is said that the mother inflicts a severe wound on 
herself, pouring the flowing blood over the dead young ones, 
which instantly brings them to life." To the same effect 
write Eustathius, Isidorus, Epiphanius, and a host of other 
writers.' 

According to another idea^ pelicans are hatched dead, but 
the cock pelican then wounds his breast, and lets one drop 
of blood fall upon each, and this quickens them. 

Pheasant. This bird is only once alluded to, in " Winter's 
Tale " (iv. 4), where the Clown jokingly says to the Shep- 
herd, ''Advocate's the court-word for a pheasant; say, you 
have none." 

PJicenix. Many allusions are made to this fabulous bird, 
which is said to rise again from its own ashes. Thus, in 
" Henry VHI." (v. 4), Cranmer tells how 

"when 
The bird of wonder dies, the maiden phcenix, 
Her ashes new create another heir, 
As great in admiration as herself." 

Again, in " 3 Henry VI." (i. 4), the Duke of York exclaims; 

" My ashes, as the phoenix, may bring forth 
A bird that will revenge upon you all." 

' See Sir Thomas Browne's Works, 1852, vol. ii. pp. 1-4. 
" Sec Brand's " Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. iii. pp. 366, 367. 
10 



146 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

Once more, in " i Henry VI." (iv. 7), Sir William Lucy, 
speaking of Talbot and those slain with him, predicts that 

" from their ashes shall be rear'd 
A phoenix that shall make all France afeard.'" 

Sir Thomas Browne ° tells us that there is but one phoenix 
in the world, " which after many hundred years burns her- 
self, and from the ashes thereof ariseth up another." From 
the very earliest times there have been countless traditions 
respecting this wonderful bird. Thus, its longevity has been 
estimated from three hundred to fifteen hundred years ; and 
among the various localities assigned as its home are Ethi- 
opia, Arabia, Egypt, and India. In " The Phoenix and Turtle," 
it is said, 

" Let the bird of loudest lay 

On the sole Arabian tree, 

Herald sad and trumpet be.'' 

Pliny says of this bird, " Howbeit, I cannot tell what to 
make of him ; and first of all, whether it be a tale or no, that 
there is never but one of them in the whole world, and the 
same not commonly seen." IVtalone^ quotes from Lyly's 
" Euphues and his England" (p. 312, ed. Arber) : "For as 
there is but one phoenix in the world, so is there but one 
tree in Arabia wherein she buyldeth ;" and Florio's " New 
Worlde of Wordes " (i 598), " Rasin, a tree in Arabia, whereof 
there is but one found, and upon it the phoenix sits." 

Pigeon. As carriers, these birds have been used from a 
very early date, and the Castle of the Birds, at Bagdad, takes 
its name from the pigeon-post which the old monks of the 
convent established. The building has crumbled into ruins 
long ago by the lapse of time, but the bird messengers of 
Bagdad became celebrated as far westward as Greece, and 
were a regular commercial institution between the distant 



' Cf. " The Tempest," iii. 3 : " All's Well that Ends Well," i. i ; " An- 
tony and Cleopatra," iii. 2 ; " Cymbeline," i. 6. 
^ Works, 1852, vol. i. pp. 277-284. 
^ See Aldis Wright's " Notes to The Tempest," 1875, p. 129. 



BIRDS. 147 

parts of Asia Minor, Arabia, and the East.' In ancient Egypt, 
also, the carrier breed was brought to great perfection, and, 
between the cities of the Nile and the Red Sea, the old trad- 
ers used to send word of their caravans to each other by let- 
ters written on silk, and tied under the wings of trained 
doves. In "Titus Andronicus" (iv. 3) Titus, on seeing a 
clown enter with two pigeons, says : 

" News, news from heaven ! Marcus, the post is come. 
Sirrah, what tidings? have you any letters?'' 

From the same play we also learn that it was customary 
to give a pair of pigeons as a present. The Clown says to 
Saturninus (iv, 4), " I have brought you a letter and a couple 
of pigeons here." '^ 

In " Romeo and Juliet " (i. 3) the dove is used synony- 
mously for pigeon, where the nurse is represented as '' 

"Sitting in the sun under the dove-house wall.'' 

Mr. Darwin, in his "Variation of Animals and Plants under 
Domestication " (vol. i. pp. 204, 205), has shown that from 
the very earliest times pigeons have been kept in a domesti- 
cated state. He says : " The earliest record of pigeons in a 
domesticated condition occurs in the fifth Egyptian dynasty, 
about 3000 B.C. ; but Mr. Birch, of the British Museum, in- 
forms me that the pigeon appears in a bill of fare in the pre- 
vious dynasty. Domestic pigeons are mentioned in Gen- 
esis, Leviticus, and Isaiah. Pliny informs us that the Ro- 
mans gave immense prices for pigeons ; ' nay, they are come 
to this pass that they can reckon up their pedigree and race.' 
In India, about the year 1600, pigeons were much valued by 
Akbar Khan ; 20,000 birds were carried about with the 
court." In most countries, too, the breeding and taming 
of pigeons has been a favorite recreation. The constancy 
of the pigeon has been proverbial from time immemorial, 

> DaiVy Telegraph, January 31, 1880; see Southey's "Commonplace 
Book," 1849, 2d series, p. 447. 
' See Dove, pp. 1 14, 115. 



148 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

allusions to which occur in " Winter's Tale " (iv. 3), and in 
"As You Like It" (iii. 3). 

Quail. The quail was thought to be an amorous bird, 
and hence was metaphorically used to denote people of a 
loose character.' In this sense it is generally understood in 
" Troilus and Cressida" (v. i) : "Here's Agamemnon, an 
honest fellow enough, and one that loves quails." Mr. Hart- 
ing,^ however, thinks that the passage just quoted refers to 
the practice formerly prevalent of keeping quails, and mak- 
ing them fight like game-cocks. The context of the passage 
would seem to sanction the former meaning. Quail fight- 
ing' is spoken of in "Antony and Cleopatra" (ii. 3), where 
Antony, speaking of the superiority of Csesar's fortunes to 
his own, says : 

" if we draw lots, he speeds ; 
His cocks do win the battle still of mine, 
When it is all to nought ; and his quails ever 
Beat mine, inhoop'd.at odds." 

It appears that cocks as well as quails were sometimes 
made to fight within a broad hoop — hence the term iiilioop'd 
— to keep them from quitting each other. Quail-fights were 
well known among the ancients, and especially at Athens.* 
Julius Pollux relates that a circle was made, in which the 
birds were placed, and he whose quail was driven out of this 
circle lost the stake, which was sometimes money, and occa- 
sionally the quails themselves. Another practice was to 
produce one of these birds, which being first smitten with 
the middle finger, a feather was then plucked from its head. 
If the quail bore this operation without flinching, his master 
gained the stake, but lost it if he ran away. Some doubt 
exists as to whether quail-fighting prevailed in the time of 

' Nares's " Glossary," vol. ii. p. 704 ; Halliwell-Phillipps's " Handbook 
Index to Shakespeare," i866, p. 398 ; Dyce's " Glossary," p. 345 ; Sing- 
er's " Shakespeare," vol. vii. p. 264. 

^ "Ornithology of Shakespeare," p. 218. 

3 Strutt's " Sports and Pastimes," 1876, pp. 19, 97,677 ; Brand's " Pop. 
Antiq.," 1849, vol. ii. pp. 59, 60. 

* Douce's " Illustrations of Shakespeare," 1839, p. 367. 



BIRDS. 14^ 

Shakespeare. At the present day' the Sumatrans practise 
these quail combats, and this pastime is common in some 
parts of Italy, and also in China. Mr. Douce has given a 
curious print, from an elegant Chinese miniature painting, 
which represents some ladies engaged at this amusement, 
where the quails are actually inhooped. 

Raven. Perhaps no bird is so universally unpopular as 
the raven, its hoarse croak, in most countries, being regard- 
ed as ominous. Hence, as might be expected, Shakespeare 
often refers to it, in order to make the scene he depicts all 
the more vivid and graphic. In " Titus Andronicus " (ii. 3), 
Tamora, describing "a barren detested vale," says: 

" The trees, though summer, yet forlorn and lean, 
O'ercome with moss and baleful mistletoe : 
Here never shines the sun ; here nothing breeds, 
Unless the nightly owl or fatal raven." 

And in " Julius Caesar" (v. i), Cassius tells us how ravens 

" Fly o'er our heads, and downward look on us, 
As we were sickly prey." " 

It seems that the superstitious dread' attaching to this 
bird has chiefly arisen from its supposed longevity,^ and its 
frequent mention and agency in Holy Writ, By the Ro- 
mans it was consecrated to Apollo, and was believed to 
have a prophetic knowledge — a notion still very prevalent. 
Thus, its supposed faculty" of " smelling death " still renders 
its presence, or even its voice, ominous. Othello (iv. i) ex- 
claims, 

" O, it comes o'er my memory, 

As doth the raven o'er the infected house, 

Boding to all." 

There is no doubt a reference here to the fanciful notion 
that it was a constant attendant on a house infected with 

' Marsden's " History of Sumatra." 181 1, p. 276. 

' Cf. " 2 Henry VI." iii. 2 ; " Troilus and Cressida," v. 2. 

^ See Brand's " Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. iii. pp. 2r i, 212. 

♦ " English Folk-lore," 1878. p. 78. 

' See Hunt's " Popular Romances of West of England," i88i,p. 380. 



I50 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



the plague. Most readers, too, are familiar with that famous 
passage in " Macbeth " (i. 5) where Lady Macbeth, having 
heard of the king's intention to stay at the castle, exclaims, 

" the raven himself is hoarse 
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan 
Under my battlements. Come, you spirits 
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, 
And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full 
Of direst cruelty !" 

We may compare Spenser's language in the " Fairy Queen " 
(bk. ii. c. vii. 1. 23): 

" After him owles and night ravens flew, 
The hateful messengers of heavy things. 
Of death and dolor telling sad tidings." 

And once more the following passage from Drayton's " Bar- 
ons' Wars " (bk. v. stanza 42) illustrates the same idea : 

" The ominous raven often he doth hear. 
Whose croaking him of following horror tells." 

In " Much Ado About Nothing " (ii. 3), the " night-raven " 
is mentioned. Benedick observes to himself: " I had as 
lief have heard the night-raven, come what plague could 
have come after it." This inauspicious bird, according to 
Steevens, is the owl ; but this conjecture is evidently wrong, 
" being at variance with sundry passages in our early writ- 
ers, who make a distinction between it and the night-raven."' 

Thus Johnson, in his " Seven Champions of Christendom '* 
(part i.), speaks of " the dismal cry of night-ravens, . . . and 
the fearefuU sound of schriek owle-s." Cotgrave regarded the 
" night-crow " and the " night-raven " as synonymous ; and 
Mr. Yarrell considered them only different names for the 
night-heron." In " 3 Henry VI." (v. 6) King Henry says: 

" The night-crow cried, aboding luckless time." 

' Dyce's "Glossary," 1876, p. 288. 

''See Harting's "Ornithology of Shakespeare," pp. loi, 102; Yar- 
rell's " History of British Birds," vol. ii. p. 581. 



BIRDS. 



151 



Goldsmith, in his " Animated Nature," calls the bittern the 
night-raven, and says : " I remember, in the place where I 
was a boy, with what terror the bird's note affected the 
whole village ; they consider it as the presage of some sad 
event, and generally found or made one to succeed it. If 
any person in the neighborhood died, they supposed it could 
not be otherwise, for the night-raven had foretold it ; but if 
nobody happened to die, the death of a cow or a sheep gave 
completion to the prophecy." 

According to an old belief the raven deserts its own young, 
to which Shakespeare alludes in " Titus Andronicus " (ii. 3): 

" Some say that ravens foster forlorn children, 
The whilst their own birds famish in their nests." 

" It was supposed that when the raven," says Mr. Harting,' 
" saw its young ones newly hatched and covered wdth down, 
it conceived such an aversion that it forsook them, and did 
not return to the nest until a darker plumage had shown it- 
self." To this belief the commentators consider the Psalm- 
ist refers, when he says, " He giveth to the beast his food, 
and to the young ravens which cry" (Psalm cxlvii. 9). We 
are told, too, in Job, " Who provideth for the raven his food? 
when his young ones cry unto God, they wander for lack of 
meat (xxxviii. 41). Shakespeare, in " As You Like It " (ii. 3), 
probably had the words of the Psalmist in his mind: . / 

" He that doth the ravens feed, Y 

Yea, providently caters for the sparrow." 

The raven has from earliest times been symbolical of black- 
ness, both in connection with color and character. In " Ro- 
meo and Juliet " (iii. 2), Juliet exclaims: 

" O serpent heart, hid with a flowering face ! 
Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave ? 
Beautiful tyrant! fiend angelical! 
Dove-feather'd raven !" ^ 

Once more, ravens' feathers were formerly used by witches, 

' " Ornithology of Shakespeare," p. 107. 

^ Cf. " Midsummer-Night's Dream," ii. 2 ; " Twelfth Night," v. i. 



152 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

from an old superstition that the wings of this bird carried 
with them contagion wherever they went. Ilcnce, in " The 
Tempest " (i. 2), Cahban says : 

" As wicked dew as e'er my mother brush'd 
With raven's feather from unwholesome fen 
Drop on you both !"' 

Robin Redbreast. According to a pretty notion,' this lit- 
tle bird is said to cover with leaves any dead body it may 
chance to find unburied ; a belief which probably, in a great 
measure, originated in the well-known ballad of the " Chil- 
dren in the Wood," although it seems to have been known 
previously. Thus Singer quotes as follows from " Cornuco- 
pia, or Divers Secrets," etc. (by Thomas Johnson, 1596): 
" The robin redbreast, if he finds a man or woman dead, will 
cover all his face with moss ; and some think that if the 
body should remain unburied that he would cover the whole 
body also." In Dekker's " Villaines Discovered by Lanthorn 
and Candlelight " (1616), quoted by Douce, it is said, " They 
that cheere up a prisoner but with their sight, are robin red- 
breasts that bring strawes in their bills to cover a dead man 
in extremitie." Shakespeare, in a beautiful passage in " Cym- 
beline " (iv. 2), thus touchingly alludes to it, making Arvira- 
gus, when addressing the supposed dead body of Imogen, 

say : 

" With fairest flowers. 

Whilst summer lasts, and I live here, Fidele, 

I'll sweeten thy sad grave : thou shalt not lack 

The flower that's like thy face, pale primrose, nor 

The azured harebell, like thy veins ; no, nor 

The leaf of eglantine, whom not to slander 

Out-sweeten'd not thy breath : the ruddock would, 

With charitable bill, — O bill, sore-shaming 

Those rich-left heirs, that let their fathers lie 

Without a monument ! — bring thee all this ; 

Yea, and furr'd moss besides, when flowers are none 

To winter-ground thy corse " — 

' " English Folk-Lore," pp. 62-64 : Brand's " Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. 
iii. p. 191 ; Singer's "Shakespeare," vol. x. p. 424; Douce's "Illustra- 
tions of Shakespeare," 1839, p. 380. 



BIRDS. ICO 

the " ruddock '" being one of the old names for the redbreast, 
which is nowadays found in some locaHties. John Webster, 
also, refers to the same idea in "The White Devil" (1857, 
ed. Dyce, p. 45) : 

" Call for the robin redbreast and the wren 
Since o'er shady grov^es they hov'er, 
And with leaves and flowers do cover 
The friendless bodies of unburied men." 

Drayton, too, in " The Owl," has the following lines: 

" Cov'ring with moss the dead's unclosed eye, 
The little redbreast teaching charitie." 

Rook. As an ominous bird this is mentioned in " Mac- 
beth " (iii. 4). Formerly the nobles of England prided them- 
selves in having a rookery" in the neighborhood of their cas- 
tles, because rooks were regarded as "fowls of good omen." 
On this account no one was permitted to kill them, under 
severe penalties. When rooks desert a rookery' it is said 
to foretell the downfall of the family on whose property it 
is. A Northumbrian saying informs us that the rooks left 
the rookery of Chipchase before the family of Reed left that 
place. There is also a notion that when rooks haunt a town 
or village " mortality is supposed to await its inhabitants, 
and if they feed in the street it shows that a storm is at 
hand." ' 

The expression "bully-rook," in " Merry Wives of Wind- 
sor " (i. 3), in Shakespeare's time, says Mr. Harting,'' had the 
same meaning as "jolly dog" nowadays; but subsequently 
it became a term of reproach, meaning a cheating sharper. 
It has been suggested that the term derives its origin from 

' Cf. Spenser's " Epithalamium," v. 8 : 

"The thrush replies, the mavis descant plays, 
The ouzell shrills, the ruddock warbles soft." 

"^ S/afidard, January 26, 1877. 

^ " English Folk-Lore," p. 76. 

' Henderson's " Folk-Lore of Northern Counties," 1879, p. 122. 

* " Ornithology of Shakespeare," p. 121. 



1^4 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

the rook in the game of chess; but Douce' considers it very 
improbable that this noble game, "never the amusement 
of gamblers, should have been ransacked on this occa- 
sion." 

Snipe. This bird was in Shakespeare's time proverbial for 
a foolish man.' In " Othello " (i. 3), lago, speaking of Rod- 
erigo, says : 

" For I mine own gain'd knowledge should profane, 
If I would time expend with such a snipe, 
But for my sport and profit." 

Sparroiv. A popular name for the common sparrow was, 
and still is, Philip, perhaps from its note, " Phip, phip." 
Hence the allusion to a person named Philip, in " King 
John" (i. i) : 

Gia-ney. Good leave, good Philip. 

Bastard. Philip .?— sparrow ! 

Staunton says perhaps Catullus alludes to this expression in 
the following lines : 

" Sed circumsiliens, modo hue. modo illuc. 
Ad solam dominam usque pipilabat." 

Skelton, in an elegy upon a sparrow, calls it " Phyllyp 
Sparowe ;" and Gascoigne also writes " The praise of Philip 
Sparrow." 

In " Measure for Measure" (iii. 2), Lucio, speaking of An- 
gelo, the deputy-duke of Vienna, says : " Sparrows must not 
build in his house-eaves, because they are lecherous." ° 

Sparroiv-hazvk. A name formerly given to a young spar- 
row-hawk was eyas-musket,* a term we find in " Merry Wives 

* " Illustrations of Shakespeare," 1839, p. 36 ; the term " bully-rook" 
occurs several times in Shadwell's " Sullen Lovers ;" see Dyce's " Glos- 
sary," p. 58. 

^ In Northamptonshire the word denotes an icicle, from its resem- 
blance to the long bill of the bird so-called. — Baker's " Northampton- 
shire Glossary," 1854, vol. ii. p. 260. 

^ See Nares's " Glossary," vol. ii. p. 653 ; Dyce's " Glossary," p. 320. 

* Derived from the French inouschet,oi the same meaning. 



BIRDS. 155 

of Windsor" (iii. 3): "How now, my eyas-musket! what 
news with you?" It was thus metaphorically used as a 
jocular phrase for a small child. As the invention, too, of 
fire-arms took place' at a time when hawking was in high 
fashion, some of the new weapons were named after those 
birds, probably from the idea of their fetching their prey 
from on high. Musket has thus become the established name 
for one sort of gun. Some, however, assert that the musket 
was invented in the fifteenth century, and owes its name to 
its inventors. 

Starling. This was one of the birds that was in days 
gone by trained to speak. In " i Henry IV." (i. 3), Hotspur 

says : j 

" I'll have a starling shall be taught to speak L 
Nothing but 'Mortimer,' and give it him, 
To keep his anger still in motion." 

Pliny tells us how starlings were taught to utter both 
Latin and Greek words for the amusement of the young 
Caesars ; and there are numerous instances on record of the 
clever sentences uttered by this amusing bird. 

Sivalloiv. This bird has generally been honored as the 
harbinger of spring, and Athenaeus relates that the Rhodians 
had a solemn song to welcome it. Anacreon has a well- 
known ode. Shakespeare, in the " Winter's Tale " (iv. 3}, 
alludes to the time of the swallow's appearance in the fol- 
lowing passage : 

" daffodils, 
That come before the swallow dares, and take 
The winds of March with beauty." 

And its departure is mentioned in"Timon of Athens" (iii. 6): 
" The swallow follows not summer more willing than we 
your lordship." 

We may compare Tennyson's notice of the bird s approach 
and migration in "The May Queen:" 



' Nares's " Glossary," vol. ii. p. 593 ; Douce's " Illustrations of Shake- 
speare," 1 839, p. 46. Turbervile tells us " the first name and terme that 
they bestowe on a falcon is an eyesse, and this name doth lastc as long 
as she is an eyrie and for that she is taken from the eyrie." 



156 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

" And the swallow '11 come back again with summer o'er the wave." 

It has been long considered lucky for the swallow to build 
its nest on the roof of a house, but just as unlucky for it to 
forsake a place which it has once tenanted. Shakespeare 
probably had this superstition in his mind when he repre- 
sents Scarus as saying, in "Antony and Cleopatra" (iv. 12): 

" Swallows have built 
In Cleopatra's sails their nests : the augurers 
Say, they know not, — they cannot tell ; — look grimly, 
And dare not speak their knowledge." 

Siuan. According to a romantic notion, dating from an- 
tiquity, the swan is said to sing sweetly just before its death, 
many pretty allusions to which we find scattered here and 
there throughout Shakespeare's plays. In " Merchant of 
Venice" (iii. 2), Portia says: 

" he makes a swan-like end. 
Fading in music." 

Emilia, too, in "Othello" (v. 2), just before she dies, ex- 
claims : 

" I will play the swan, 
And die in music." 

In " King John" (v. 7), Prince Henry, at his father's death- 
bed, thus pathetically speaks : 

" 'Tis strange that death should sing. 
I am the cygnet to this pale faint swan, 
Who chants a doleful hymn to his own death, 
And from the organ-pipe of frailty sings 
His soul and body to their lasting rest." 

Again, in " Lucrece" (161 1), we have these touching lines: 

"And now this pale swan in her watery nest, 
Begins the sad dirge of her certain ending." 

And once more, in " The Phoenix and Turtle:" 

" Let the priest in surplice white, 
That defunctive music can, 
Be the death-divining swan. 
Lest the requiem lack his right." 



BIRDS. If 7 

This superstition, says Douce," " was credited by Plato, 
Chrysippus, Aristotle, Euripides, Philostratus, Cicero, Seneca, 
and Martial. Pliny, yElian, and Athen^eus, among the an- 
cients, and Sir Thomas More, among the moderns, treat this 
opinion as a vulgar error. Luther believed in it." This 
notion probably originated in the swan being identified with 
Orpheus. Sir Thomas Browne" says, we read that, " after his 
death, Orpheus, the musician, became a swan. Thus was it 
the bird of Apollo, the bird of music by the Greeks." Al- 
luding to this piece of folk-lore, Carl EngeP remarks: "Al- 
though our common swan does not produce sounds which 
might account for this tradition, it is a well-known fact that 
the wild swan {Cygiius fcnis), also called the 'whistling swan,' 
when on the wing emits a shrill tone, which, however harsh 
it may sound if heard near, produces a pleasant effect when, 
emanating from a large flock high in the air, it is heard in a 
variety of pitches of sound, increasing or diminishing in 
loudness according to the movement of the birds and to the 
current of the air." Colonel Hawker* says, " The only note 
which I ever heard the wild swan make, in winter, is his well- 
known ' whoop.' "" 

Tasscl-Goitld' The male of the goshawk was so called 
on account of its tractable disposition, and the facility with 
which it was tamed. The word occurs in " Romeo and Juliet " 

(ii.2): 

" O, for a falconer's voice 
To lure this tassel-gentle back again !" 

Spenser, in his " Fairy Queen " (bk. iii. c. iv. 1. 49), says 

" Having far oflf espied a tassel-gent 
Which after her his nimble wings doth straine." 



■ " Illustrations of Shakespeare," 1839, p. 161. 

"^ Works, 1852, vol. i. p. 357. 

^ " Musical Myths and Facts," 1876, vol. i. p. 89. 

* " Instructions to Young Sportsmen," i ith ed., p. 269, 

* See Baring-Gould's "Curious Myths of the Middle Ages," 1877, 
p. 561 ; Thorpe's "Northern Mythology," 1852, vol. iii. pp. 302-328. 

* Properly "tiercel gentle," Yr&x\c\\, ticrcelct ; cf. " Troilus and Cres- 
sida," iii. 2, " the falcon as the tercel." 



158 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



This species of hawk was also commonly called a " falcon- 
gentle," on account of ".her familiar, courteous disposition.'" 
Turkey. This bird, so popular with us at Christmas-tide, 
is mentioned in " i Henry IV." (ii. i), where the First Car- 
rier says : " God's body ! the turkeys in my pannier are quite 
starved." This, however, is an anachronism on the part of 
Shakespeare, as the turkey was unknown in this country I 
until the reign of Henry VHI. According to a rhyme writ- 
ten in 1525, commemorating the introduction of this bird, 
we are told how : 

" Turkies, carps, hoppes, piccarell, and beere, 
Came into England all in one yeare." 

The turkey is again mentioned by Shakespeare in "Twelfth 
Night" (ii. 5), where Fabian says of Malvolio : " Contempla- 
tion makes a rare turkey-cock of him : how he jets under his 
advanced plumes!" 

Vulture. In several passages Shakespeare has most forci- 
bly introduced this bird to deepen the beauty of some of his 
exquisite passages. Thus, in " King Lear" (ii. 4), when he is 
complaining of the unkindness of a daughter, he bitterly 

exclaims : 

" O Regan, she hath tied 
Sharp-tooth'd unkindness, like a vulture, here." 

What, too, can be more graphic than the expression of Ta- 
mora in " Titus Andronicus" (v. 2) : 

"I am Revenge, sent from the infernal kingdom, 
To ease the gnawing vulture of thy mind." 

Equally forcible, too, are Pistol's words in " The Merry Wives 
of Windsor" (i. 3) : " Let vultures gripe thy guts." 

Johnson considers that "the vulture of sedition" in "2 
Henry VI." (iv. 3) is in allusion to the tale of Prometheus, 
but of this there is a decided uncertainty. 

Wagtail. In " King Lear" (ii. 2), Kent says, " Spare my 

'"Gentleman's Recreation," p. 19, quoted in Nares's "Glossary," 
vol. ii. p. 867. 



BIRDS. 150 

grey beard, you wagtail ?" the word being used in an oppro- 
brious sense, to signify an officious person. 

JVofldcock. In several passages this bird is used to denote 
a fool or silly person ; as in " Taming of the Shrew" (i. 2) : 
" O this woodcock ! what an ass it is !" And again, in " Much 
Ado About Nothing" (v. i), where Claudio, alluding to the 
plot against Benedick, says : " Shall I not find a woodcock 
too ?" In " Love's Labour's Lost " (iv. 3) Biron says : 

" O heavens, I have my wish ! 
Dumain transformed : four woodcocks in a dish." 

The woodcock has generally been proverbial as a foolish 
bird — perhaps because it is easily caught in springes or nets.' 
Thus the popular phrase "Springes to catch woodcocks" 
meant arts to entrap simplicity,' as in " Hamlet" (i. 3): 1 ^^ 

" Aye, springes to catch woodcocks." 

A similar expression occurs in Beaumont and Fletcher's 
" Loyal Subject " (iv. 4) : 

" Go hke a woodcock, 
And thruGt your neck i' th' noose." 

" It seems," says Nares, " that woodcocks are now grown 
wiser by time, for we do not now hear of their being so easily 
caught. If they were sometimes said to be without brains, 
it was only founded on their character, certainly not on any 
examination of the fact.'"* Formerly, one of the terms for 
twilighf* was "cock-shut time," because the net in which 
cocks, /. r., woodcocks, were shut in during the twilight, was 
called a "cock-shut." It appears that a large net was 
stretched across a glade, and so suspended upon poles as 
to be easily drawn together. Thus, in " Richard III." (v. 3), 
Ratcl iff says : 



' Dyce's " Glossary," p. 508. 

^ Nares's " Glossary," vol. ii. p. 971. 

^ See Willughby's "Ornithology," iii. section i. 

* Minsheu's " Guide into Tongues," ed. 1617. 



l6o FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

"Thomas the Earl of Surrey, and himself, 
Much about cock-shut time, from troop to troop, 
Went through the army, cheering up the soldiers." 

In Ben Jonson's " Masque of Gypsies" we read : 

" Mistress, this is only spite ; 
For you would not yesternight 
Kiss him in the cock-shut light." 

Sometimes it was erroneously written " cock-shoot." " Come, 
come away then, a fine cock-shoot evening." In the "Two 
Noble Kinsmen" (iv. i) we find the term "cock-light." 

Wren. The diminutive character of this bird is noticed 
in "A Midsummer-Night's Dream" (iii. i,song): 

" The wren with little quill." 

In " Macbeth " (iv. 2), Lady Macbeth says : 

" the poor wren, 
The most diminutive of birds, will fight. 
Her young ones in her nest, against the owl." 

Considering, too, that as many as sixteen young ones have 
been found in this little bird's nest, we can say with Grahame, 
in his poem on the birds of Scotland : 

" But now behold the greatest of this train 
Of miracles, stupendously minute ; 
The numerous progeny, claimant for food 
Supplied by two small bills, and feeble wings 
Of narrow range, supplied — ay, duly fed — 
Fed in the dark, and yet not one forgot." 

The epithet " poor," applied to the wren by Lady Macbeth, 
was certainly appropriate in days gone by, when we recollect 
how it was cruelly hunted in Ireland on St. Stephen's day — 
a practice which prevailed also in the Isle of Man.' 

» See Yarrell's " History of British Birds," vol. ii. p. 178. 



CHAPTER VII. 

ANIMALS. 

As in the case of the birds considered in the previous 
chapter, Shakespeare has also interwoven throughout his 
plays an immense deal of curious folk-lore connected with 
animals. Not only does he allude with the accuracy of a 
naturalist to the peculiarities and habits of certain animals, 
but so true to nature is .he in his graphic descriptions of 
them that it is evident his knowledge was in a great meas- 
ure acquired from his own observation. It is interesting, 
also, to note how carefully he has, here and there, worked 
into his narrative some old proverb or superstition, thereby 
adding a freshness to the picture which has, if possible, im- 
bued it with an additional lustre. In speaking of the dog, 
he has introduced many an old hunting custom ; and his 
references to the tears of the deer are full of sweet pathos, 
as, for instance, where Hamlet says (iii. 2), " Let the stricken 
deer go weep." It is not necessary, however, to add further 
illustrations, as these will be found in the following pages. 

Ape. In addition to Shakespeare's mention of this animal 
as a common term of contempt, there are several other al- 
lusions to it. There is the well-known phrase, " to lead apes 
in hell," applied to old maids, mentioned in the " Taming of 
the Shrew" (ii. i) — the meaning of this term not having 
been yet satisfactorily explained." (It is further discussed 
in the chapter on IMarriage.) 

In "2 Henry IV." (ii. 4), the word is used as a term of 
endearment, " Alas, poor ape, how thou sweat'st." -^ 

Ass. Beyond the proverbial use of this much ill-treated 
animal to denote a silly, foolish person, Shakespeare has said 

' See page 165. 
II 



l62 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

little about it. In " Troilus and Cressida" (ii. i), Thersites 
uses the word assincgo, a Portuguese expression for a young 
ass, "Thou hast no more brain than I have in mine elbows; 
an assinego may tutor thee." It is used by Beaumont and 
Fletcher in the " Scornful Lady" (v. 4) ; "All this would be 
forsworn, and I again an assinego, as your sister left me."' 
Dyce' would spell the word " asinico," because it is so spelled 
in the old editions of Shakespeare, and is more in accordance 
with the Spanish word.' In "King Lear" (i. 4), the Fool 
alludes to yEsop's celebrated fable of the old man and his 
ass: " thou borest thine ass on thy back o'er the dirt." 

Bat. The bat, immortalized by Shakespeare (" The Tem- 
pest," V. i) as the " delicate Ariel's" steed — 

" On the bat's back I do fly," 

— has generally been an object of superstitious dread, and 
proved to the poet and painter a fertile source of images of 
gloom and terror." In Scotland '" it is still connected with 
witchcraft, and if, while flying, it rise and then descend again 
earthwards, it is a sign that the witches' hour is come — the 
hour in which they are supposed to have power over every 
human being who is not specially shielded from their influ- 
ence. Thus, in " Macbeth " (i\\ i) the " wool of bat " forms 
an ingredient in the witches' caldron. One of its popular 
names is " i-ere-mouse," which occurs in "A Midsummer- 
Night's Dream" (ii. 2), where Titania says ; 

" Some, war with rere-mice for their leathern wings, 
To make my small elves coats." 

This term is equivalent to the Anglo-Saxon, Jtrcrc-imh, from 
hreran, to stir, agitate, and so the same as the old name 

' Nares's " Glossary," vol. i. p. 38. 
= " Glossary to Shakespeare," 1876, p. 20. 

^ "Asinico, a little ass," Connelly's "Spanish and English Diction- 
ary," Madrid, 4to. 

* " English Folk-Lore," p. 1 15 ; cf. " Macbeth," iii. 2. 

* Henderson's "Folk-Lore of Northern Counties," 1879, pp. 125, 
126. 



ANIMALS. 1 6^ 

" flitter-mouse."' The early copies spell the word rcrciiiise'J' 
It occurs in the Wicliffite version of Leviticus xi. 19, and 
the plural in the form " reremees" or " rere-myis" is found in 
Isaiah ii. 20. At Polperro, Cornwall,' the village boys call it 
" air)'-mouse," and address it in the following rhyme : 

" Airy mouse, airy mouse ! fly over my head, 
And you shall have a crust of bread ; 
And when I brew, and when I bake, 
You shall have a piece of my wedding-cake." 

In Scotland* it is known as the Backe or Bakie bird. An 
immense deal of folk-lore has clustered round this curious 
little animal.^ 

Bear. According to an old idea, the bear brings forth un- 
formed lumps of animated flesh, and then licks them into 
shape — a vulgar error, referred to in " 3 Henry VI." (iii. 2), 
where Gloster, bemoaning his deformity, says of his mother: 

" She did corrupt frail nature with some bribe, 

* ^1 ^ ^ Hi :^ 

To disproportion me in every part. 

Like to a chaos, or an unlick'd bear-whelp, 

That carries no impression like the dam." 

This erroneous notion, however, was long ago confuted by 
Sir Thomas Browne.^ Alexander Ross, in his " Arcana 
Microcosmi," nevertheless affirms that bears bring forth their 
young deformed and misshapen, by reason of the thick 
membrane in which they are wrapped, that is covered over 
with a mucous matter. This, he says, the dam contracts in 
the winter-time, by lying in hollow caves without motion, so 



' It has been speciously derived from the English word rear, in the 
sense of being able to raise itself in the air, but this is erroneous. 
Nares's "Glossary," vol. ii. p. 726. 

- Aldis Wright's " Notes to A Midsummer-Nights Dream, " 1877, p. 

lOI. 

^ " Folk-Lore Record," 1879, p. 201. 
* Jamieson's "Scottish Dictionary," 1879, vol. i. p. 106. 
-See Brand's "Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. iii. p. 189; Harting's "Or- 
nithology of Shakespeare," 1871, pp. 13. 14. 
' " Vulgar Errors,". 1 852, vol. i. p. 247. 



164 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



that to the eye the cub appears Hke an unformed lump. The 
above mucilage is afterwards licked away by the dam, and 
the membrane broken, whereby that which before seemed to 
be unformed appears now in its right shape. This, he con- 
tends, is all that the ancients meant.' Ovid (Metamorphoses, 
bk. XV. 1. 379) thus describes this once popular fancy : 

" Nee eatulus, partu quern reddidit ursa recenti, 
Sed male viva caro est : lambendo mater in artus 
Fingit, et in formam, quantam capit ipsa, reducit." 

Bears, in days gone by, are reported to have been surprised 
by means of a mirror, which they would gaze on, affording 
their pursuers an opportunity of taking the surer aim. In 
"Julius Caesar" (ii. i), this practice is mentioned by Decius: 

" unicorns may be betray 'd with trees, 
And bears with glasses." - 

Batman, " On Bartholomaeus" (1582), speaking of the bear, 
says, " And when he is taken he is made blinde with a 
bright basin, and bound with chaynes, and compelled to 
playe." This, however, says Mr. Aldis Wright,^ probably 
refers to the actual blinding of the bear, 

A favorite amusement with our ancestors was bear-baiting. 
As early as the reign of Henry II. the baiting of bears by 
dogs was a popular game in London," while at a later period 
" a royal bear-ward " was an officer regularly attached to the 
royal household. In " 2 Henry VI." (v. i), this personage is 
alluded to by Clifford, who says : 

" Are these thy bears ? We'll bait thy bears to death, 
And manacle the bear-ward in their chains, 
If thou dar'st bring them to the baiting place." 

And again, in " Much Ado About Nothing" (ii. 1), Beatrice 

'See Bartholomaeus, " De Proprietate Rerum," lib. xviii. c. 112; 
Aristotle, " History of Animals," lib. vi. c. 31; Pliny's "Natural His- 
tory," lib. viii. c. 54. ^ Steevens on this passage. 

^ " Notes on Julius Caesar," 1878, p. 134. 

* " Notices Illustrative of the Drama and other Popular Amuse- 
ments," incidentally illustrating Shakespeare and his contemporaries, 
extracted from the MSS. of Leicester, by W. Kelly, 1865, p. 152. 



ANIMALS. 



165 



says, " I will even take sixpence in earnest of the bear-ward, 
and lead his apes into hell." The synonymous term, " bear- 
herd," occurs in "Taming of the Shrew" (Ind. scene 2), 
where Sly speaks of himself as "by transmutation a bear- 
herd ;" and in " 2 Henry IV." (i. 2), Sir John Falstaff remarks 
how " true valor is turned bear-herd." Among the Harleian 
MSS.* is preserved the original Avarrant of Richard III. ap- 
pointing John Brown to this office, and which recites " the 
diligent service he had done the king" as the ground for 
granting him the privilege of wandering about the country 
with his bears and apes, and receiving the " loving benevo- 
lence and favors of the people."^ In the time of Queen 
Elizabeth bear-baiting was still a favorite pastime, being 
considered a fashionable entertainment for ladies of the 
highest rank.' James 1.' encouraged this sport. Nichols* 
informs us that on one occasion the king, accompanied by 
his court, took the queen, the Princess Elizabeth, and the 
two young princes to the Tower to witness a fight between a 
lion and a bear, and by the king's command the bear (which 
had killed a child that had been negligently left in the bear- 
house) was afterwards " baited to death upon a stage in the 
presence of many spectators," Popular, says Mr. Kelly, as 
bear-baiting was in the metropolis and at court, it was equally 
so among all classes of the people.^ It is on record that at 
Congleton, in Cheshire, "the town-bear having died, the 
corporation in 1601 gave orders to sell their Bible, in order 
to purchase another, which was done, and the town no 
longer without a bear." This event is kept up in a popular 
rhyme : 

" ConjTleton rare, Congleton rare, 
Sold the Bible to pay for a bear." 

' No. 433. The document is given at length in Collier's " Annals of 
the Stage," vol. i. p. 35, note. 

* Kelly's " Notices of Leicester," p. 152. 
=■ Wright's " Domestic Manners," p. 304. 

* " Progresses and Processions," vol. ii. p. 259. 

* About 1760 it was customary to have a bear baited at the election 
of the mayor. Corry, " History of Liverpool," 1810, p. 93. 



1 66 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

The same legend attaches to CHfton, a village near Rugby : 

" Clifton-upon-Dunsmore, in Warwickshire, 
Sold the Church Bible to buy a bear." 

In Pulleyn's "Etymological Compendium,'" we are told 
that " this cruel amusement is of African origin, and was in- 
troduced into Europe by the Romans. It is further alluded 
to by Shakespeare in "Twelfth Night" (i. 3), " dancing and 
bear-baiting;" and further on in the same play (ii. 5) Fabian 
says, " he brought me out o' favor with my lady about a 
bear-baiting here ;" and Macbeth (v. 7) relates: 

" They have tied me to a stake ; I cannot fly. 
But, bear-like, I must fight the course." "-^ 

And in "Julius Caesar" (iv. i), Octavius says: 

" we are at the stake, 
And bay'd about with many enemies." 

Boar. It appears that in former times boar-hunting was 
a favorite recreation ; many allusions to which we find in old 
writers. Indeed, in the Middle Ages, the destruction of a 
wild boar ranked among the deeds of chivalry,' and " won 
for a warrior almost as much renown as the slaying an enemy 
in the open field." So dangerous, too, was boar-hunting 
considered, that Shakespeare represents Venus as dissuading 
Adonis from the perilous practice: 

" ' O, be advised ! thou know'st not what it is, 
With javelin's point a churlish swine to gore, 
Whose tushes never sheathed he whetteth still. 
Like to a mortal butcher, bent to kill. 

* ^ =!: :|: * * 

His brawny sides, with hairy bristles arm'd. 
Are better proof than thy spear's point can enter ; 
His short thick neck cannot be easily harm'd ; 
Being ireful, on the lion he will venture.' " 



' Edited by M. A. Thorns, 1853, p. 170. 

" For further information on this subject consult Strutt's " Sports 
and Pastimes," 1876; Kelly's "Notices of Leicester," pp. 152-159. 
^ Chambers's " Book of Days," 1864, vol. ii. pp. 518, 519. 



ANIMALS. l5y 

Such hunting expeditions were generally fatal to some of 
the dogs, and occasionally to one or more of the hunters.' 
An old tradition of Grimsby, in Lincolnshire,' asserts that 
every burgess, at his admission to the freedom of the borough, 
anciently presented to the mayor a boar's head, or an equiv- 
alent in money, when the animal could not be procured. 
The old seal of the mayor of Grimsby represents a boar 
hunt. The lord, too, of the adjacent manor of Bradley, was 
obliged by his tenure to keep a supply of these animals in 
his wood, for the entertainment of the mayor and burgesses." 
A curious triennial custom called the " Rhyne Toll," is ob- 
served at Chetwode, a small village about five- miles from 
Buckingham.^ According to tradition, it originated in the 
destruction of an enormous wild boar^the terror of the sur- 
rounding county — by one of the lords of Chetwode ; who, 
after fighting with it for four hours on a hot summer's day, 
eventually killed it : 

" Then Sir Ryalas he drawed his broad sword with might. 
Wind well thy horn, good hunter ; 
And he fairly cut the boar's head oft" quite, 
For he was a jovial hunter." 

As a reward, it is said, the king " granted to him and to his 
heirs forever, among other immunities and privileges, the 
full right to levy every year the Rhyne Toll." This is stili 
kept up, and consists of a yearly tax on all cattle found 
within the manor of Chetwode between the 30th of October 
and the 7th of November, inclusive. In " Antony and 
Cleopatra" (iv. 13) Cleopatra alludes to the famous boar 
killed by Meleager, 

" the boar of Thessaly 
Was never so emboss'd."* 



' Hampson's "CEvi Medii Kalendarium," vol. i. p. 96. 

" See Gentleman's Magazine, vol. xcviii. pp. 401, 402. 

^ See " Book of Days," vol. ii. pp. 517-519. 

♦ "Embossed" is a hunting term, properly applied to a deer when 
foaming at the mouth from fatigue, see p. 179; also Dyce's "Glossary 
to Shakespeare," p. 142; see Nares's " Glossary," vol. i.p. 275. 



l68 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

Bull, Once upon a time there was scarcely a town or vil- 
lage of any magnitude which had not its bull-ring.' Indeed, 
it was not until the year 1835 that baiting was finally put 
down by an act of Parliament, " forbidding the keeping of 
any house, pit, or other place for baiting or fighting any 
bull, bear, dog, or other animal ;" and, after an existence of 
at least seven centuries, this ceased to rank among the 
amusements of the English people." This sport is alluded 
to in " Merry Wives of Windsor" (v. 5), " Remember, Jove, 
thou wast a bull for thy Europa." We may, too, compare 
the expressions in " Troilus and Cressida" (v. 7), " Now, bull, 
now, dog! . . . The bull has the game."^ 

Cat. Few animals, in times past, have been more esteemed 
than the cat, or been honored with a wider folk-lore. In- 
deed, among the Egyptians this favored animal was held 
sacred to Isis, or the moon, and worshipped with great cere- 
mony. In the mythology of all the Indo-European nations 
the cat holds a prominent place ; and its connection with 
witches is well known. " The picture of a witch," says Mr. 
Henderson,^ " is incomplete without her cat, by rights a black 
one." In " Macbeth " (iv. i) the first witch says : 

" Thrice the brinded cat hath mew'd " — 

it being a common superstition that the form most general- 
ly assumed by the familiar spirits of witches was the cat. 
Thus, in another passage of the same play (i. i), the first 
witch says: "I come, Graymalkin " — the word otherwise 
spelled Grimalkin," meaning a gray cat. Numerous stories 
are on record of witches having disguised themselves as 



^Wright's "Domestic Manners," p. 304; see Strutt's "Sports and 
Pastimes;" Smith's " Festivals, Games, and Amusements," 1831, pp. 
192-229. 

^ " Book of Days," vol. ii. p. 59. 

^ Cf. " 2 Henry IV." ii. 2, "the town-bull." 

* " Folk-Lore of Northern Counties," p. 267 ; Brand's " Pop. Antiq.," 
1849, vol. iii. p. 7. 

^ Malkin is a diminutive of "Mary;" " Maukin," the same word, is 
still used in Scotland for a hare. " Notes to Macbeth," by Clark and 
Wright, 1877, p. 75. 



ANIMALS. i5q 

cats, in order to carry out their fiendish designs. A wood- 
man out working in the forest has his dinner every day stolen 
by a cat. Exasperated at the continued repetition of the 
theft, he lies in wait for the aggressor, and succeeds in cutting 
off her paw, when lo ! on his return home he finds his wife 
minus a hand.' An honest Yorkshireman," wdio bred pigs, 
often lost the young ones. On applying to a certain wise 
man of Stokesley, he was informed that they were bewitched 
by an old woman who lived near. The owner of the pigs, 
calling to mind that he had often seen a cat prowling about 
his yard, decided that this was the old woman in disguise. He 
watched for her, and, as soon as she made her appearance, 
flung at her a poker with all his might. The cat disappeared, 
and, curiously enough, the poor old woman in question that 
night fell and broke her leg. This was considered as conclusive 
that she was the witch that had simulated the form of a cat. 
This notion is very prevalent on the Continent. It is said 
that witch-cats have a great hankering after beer.^ Witches 
are adepts in the art of brewing, and therefore fond of tasting 
what their neighbors brew. On these occasions they always 
masquerade as cats, and what they steal they consume on the 
spot. There was a countryman whose beer was all drunk up 
by night whenever he brewed, so that at last he resolved for 
once to sit up all night and watch. As he was standing by 
his brewing pan, a number of cats made their appearance, and 
calling to them, he said ; " Come, puss, puss, come, warm you 
a bit." So in a ring they all sat round the fire as if to warm 
themselves. After a time, he asked them " if the water \\-as 
hot." "Just on the boil," said they; and as he spoke he 
dipped his long-handled pail in the wort, and soused the 
whole company with it. They all vanished at once, but on 
the following day his wife had a terribly scalded face, and 
then he knew who it was that had always drunk his beer. 
This story is w'idely prevalent, and is current among the 



* Sternberg's "Dialect and Folk-Lore of Northamptonshire," 1851, 
p. 148. 
^ Henderson's " Folk-Lore of Northern Counties," 1879, p. 206. 
' Kelly's " Indo-European Folk-Lore," 1863, p. 238. 



170 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



Flemish-speaking natives of Belgium. Again, a North Ger- 
man tradition ' tells us of a peasant who had three beautiful 
large cats. A neighbor begged to have one of them, and 
obtained it. To accustom it to the place, he shut it up in 
the loft. At night, the cat, popping its head through the 
window, said, " What shall I bring to-night?" " Thou shalt 
bring mice," answered the man. The cat then set to work, 
and cast all it caught on the floor. Next morning the place 
was so full of dead mice that it was hardly possible to open 
the door, and the man was employed the whole day in 
throwing them away by bushels. At night the cat again 
asked, "What shall I bring to-night?" "Thou shalt bring 
.rye," answered the peasant. The cat was now busily em- 
ployed in shooting down rye, so that in the morning the 
door could not be opened. • The man then discovered that 
the cat was a witch, and carried it back to his neighbor. 
A similar tradition occurs in Scandinavian mythology.'' 
Spranger' relates that a laborer, on one occasion, was at- 
tacked by three young ladies in the form of cats, and that 
they were wounded by him. On the following day they 
were found bleeding in their beds. In Vernon,' about the 
year 1566, " the witches and warlocks gathered in great mul- 
titudes under the shape of cats. Four or five men were at- 
tacked in a lone place by a number of these beasts. The 
men stood their ground, and succeeded in slaying one cat 
and wounding many others. Next day a number of wounded 
women were found in the town, and they gave the.judge an 
accurate account of all the circumstances connected with 
their wounding." It is only natural, then, that Shakespeare, 
in his description of the witches in " Macbeth," should have 
associated them with the popular superstition which repre- 
sents the cat as their agent — a notion that no doubt origi- 
nated in the classic story of Galanthis being turned into a 



' Thorpe's " Northern Mythology," 1851, vol. iii. p. 32. 
- Ibid., vol. ii. p. 32 ; vol. iii. pp. 26-236. 
^ See Baring-Gould's " Book of Werewolves," 1869, p. 65. 
* Ibid., p. 66. 



ANIMALS. J -J 

cat, and becoming-, through the compassion of Ilecatc, her 
priestess. From their supposed connection with witchcraft, 
cats were formerly often tormented by the ignorant vulgar. 
Thus it appears' that, in days gone by, they (occasionally 
fictitious ones) were hung up in baskets and shot at with 
arrows. In some counties, too, they were enclosed, with a 
quantit}' of soot, in wooden bottles suspended on a line, and 
he who could beat out the bottom of the bottle as he ran 
under it, and yet escape its contents, was the hero of the 
sport." Shakespeare alludes to this practice in " Much Ado 
About Nothing" (i. i), where Benedick says: " Hang me in 
a bottle like a cat, and shoot at me." 

Percy, in his " Reliques of Ancient English Poetry " (1794, 
vol. i. p. 155), says: ''It is still a diversion in Scotland to 
hang up a cat in a small cask or firkin, half filled with soot ; 
and then a parcel of clowns on horseback try to beat out the 
ends of it, in order to show their dexterity in escaping be- 
fore the contents fall upon them." 

This practice was once kept up at Kelso, in Scotland, ac- 
cording to Ebenezer Lazarus, who, in his " Description of 
Kelso " (1789, p. 144), has given a graphic description of the 
whole ceremony. He says, " This is a sport which was com- 
mon in the last century at Kelso on the Tweed. A large 
concourse of men, women, and children assembled in a field 
about half a mile from the town, and a cat having been put 
into a barrel stuffed full of soot, was suspended on a cross- 
beam between two high poles. A certain number of the 
whipmen, or husbandmen, who took part in this savage and 
unmanly amusement, then kept striking, as they rode to and 
fro on horseback, the barrel in which the unfortunate animal 
was confined, until at last, under the heavy blows of their 
clubs and mallets, it broke, and allowed the cat to drop. 
The victim was then seized and tortured to death." He 
justly stigmatizes it, saying: 



' Dyce's " Glossary to Shakespeare," p. 70. 

= See Brand's " Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. iii. p. 39 ; also Wright's " Es- 
says on the Superstitions of the Middle Ages," 1846, 



1/2 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

' The cat in the barrel exhibits such a farce, 
That he who can rehsh it is worse than an ass." 



Cats, from their great powers of resistance, are said to have 
nine lives;' hence Mercutio, in " Romeo and Juhet" (iii. i), 
says : " Good king of cats, nothing but one of your nine 
Hves." Ben Jonson, in " Every Man in His Humour " (iii. 2), 
makes Edward Knowell say to Bobadil, " 'Twas pity you 
had not ten; a cat's and your own." And in Gay's fable of 
the " Old Woman and her Cats," one of these animals is in- 
troduced, upbraiding the witch : 

" 'Tis infamy to serve a hag, 
Cats are thought imps, her broom a nag ; 
And boys against our Hves combine, 
Because 'tis said, your cats have nine." 

In Marston's " Dutch Courtezan " we read : 

" Why, then, thou hast nine Hves Hke a cat." 

And in Dekker's "Strange Horse -Race" (1613): "When 
the grand Helcat had gotten these two furies with nine 
lives." This notion, it maybe noted, is quite the reverse of 
the well-known saying, " Care will kill a cat," mentioned in 
"Much Ado About Nothing" (v. i), where Claudio says: 
" What though care killed a cat." 

For some undiscovered reason a cat was formerly called 
Tybert or Tybalt;" hence some of the insulting remarks of 
Mercutio, in " Romeo and Juliet " (iii. i), who calls Tybalt 
"rat-catcher" and "king of cats." In the old romance of 
" Hystorye of Reynard the Foxe " (chap, vi.), w^e are told 
how " the king called for Sir Tibert, the cat, and said to him, 
Sir Tibert, you shall go to Reynard, and summon him the 
second time." ' A popular term for a wild cat was " cat-o'- 
mountain," an expression^ borrowed from the Spaniards, 
who call the wild cat " gato-montes." In the " Merry Wives 

' See Brand's " Pop. Antiq.," vol. iii. p. 42. 

" Dyce's " Glossary to Shakespeare," p. 466. 

^ From Tibert, Tib was also a common name for a cat. 

* Douce's " Illustrations of Shakespeare," 1839, p. 41. 



ANIMALS. jy^ 

of Windsor " (ii. 2), Falstaff says of Pistol, " Your cat-a-moun- 
tain looks." 

The word cat was used as a term of contempt, as in " The 
Tempest " (ii. i) and "A Midsummer-Night's Dream " (iii. 2), 
where Lysander says, " Hang off, thou cat." Once more, 
too, in " Coriolanus " (iv. 2), we find it in the same sense : 

" 'Twas you incensed the rabble ; 
Cats, that can judge as fitly of his worth, 
As I can of those mysteries which heaven 
Will not have earth to know." 

A gib, or a gib cat, is an old male cat ' — gib being the con- 
traction of Gilbert," and is, says Nares, an expression exactly 
analogous to that of jackass.^ Tom-cat is now the usual 
term. The word was certainly not bestowed upon a cat 
early in life, as is evident from the melancholy character as- 
cribed to it in Shakespeare's allusion in " i Henry IV." (i. 2) : 
" I am as melancholy as a gib cat." Ray gives "as melan- 
choly as a gib'd [a corruption of gib] cat." The term occurs 
again in "Hamlet" (iii. 4). It is improperly applied to a 
female by Beaumont and Fletcher, in the " Scornful Lady " 
(v. i) : " Bring out the cat-hounds ! I'll make you take a tree, 
whore ; then with my tiller bring down your gib-ship, and 
then have you cased and hung up in the warren." 

Cliainclcon. This animal was popularly believed to feed 
on air, a notion which Sir Thomas Browne^ has carefully 
discussed. He has assigned, among other grounds for this 
vulgar opinion, its power of abstinence, and its faculty of 
self-inflation. It lives on insects, which it catches by its 
long, gluey tongue, and crushes between its jaws. It has 
been ascertained by careful experiment that the chameleon 
can live without eating for four months. It can inflate not 
only its lungs, but its whole body, including even the feet 



' Dyce's "Glossar}^" p. 183. 

^ A gibbe Tan old male cat). Macou, Cotgrave's " French and English 
Dictionary." 

^ "Glossary," vol. i. p. 360. 

* "Vulgar Errors," bk. iii. p. 21, 1852 ; bk. i.p. 321, ?tote. 



174 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



and tail. In allusion to this supposed characteristic, Shake- 
speare makes Hamlet say (iii. 2), " Of the chameleon's dish : 
I eat the air, promise-crammed ; you cannot feed capons 
so;" and in the "Two Gentlemen of Verona" (ii. i) Speed 
says: " Though the chameleon, Love, can feed on the air, I 
am one that am nourished by my victuals, and would fain 
have meat." There is, too, a popular notion that this ani- 
mal undergoes frequent changes of color, according to that 
of the bodies near it. This, however, depends on the voli- 
tion of the animal, or the state of its feelings, on its good or 
bad health, and is subordinate to climate, age, and sex.' In 
" 3 Henry VI." (iii. 2) Gloster boasts : 

" I can add colours to the chameleon, 
Change shapes, with Proteus, for advantages." 

Cockatrice. This imaginary creature, also called a basi- 
lisk, has been the subject of extraordinary prejudice. It was 
absurdly said to proceed from the eggs of old cocks. It has 
been represented as having eight feet, a crown on the head, 
and a hooked and recurved beak.^ Pliny asserts that the 
basilisk had a voice so terrible that it struck terror into all 
other species. Sir Thomas Browne,^ however, distinguishes 
the cockatrice from the ancient basilisk. He says, " This 
of ours is generally described with legs, wings, a serpentine 
and winding tail, and a crest or comb somewhat like a cock. 
But the basilisk of elder times was a proper kind of serpent, 
not above three palms long, as some account ; and different 
from other serpents by advancing his head and some white 
marks, or coronary spots upon the crown, as all authentic 
writers have delivered." No other animal, perhaps, has 
given rise to so many fabulous notions. Thus, it was sup- 
posed to have so deadly an eye as to kill by its very look, 
to which Shakespeare often alludes. In "Romeo and Ju- 
liet " (iii. 2), Juliet says : 



» Ovid ("Metamorphoses," bk. xv. 1. 411) speaks of its changes of 
color. 

- Cuvier's " Animal Kingdom," 1831, vol. ix. p. 226. 
= " Vulgar Errors," bk. iii. p. 7. 



ANIMALS. 1^5 

"say thou but • I,' 
And that bare vowel, ' I,' shall poison more 
Than the death-darting eye of cockatrice." 

In "Richard III." (iv. i) the Duchess exclaims: 

" O my accursed womb, the bed of death ! 
A cockatrice hast thou hatch'd to the world. 
Whose unavoided eye is murderous !" 

In " Lucrece " (1. 540) we read : 

" Here with a cockatrice' dead-killing eye 
He rouseth up himself, and makes a pause.*' 

Once more,' in " Twelfth Night " (iii. 4), Sir Toby Belch af- 
firms: "This will so fright them both that they will kill one 
another by the look, like cockatrices." It has also been 
affirmed that this animal could not exercise this faculty un- 
less it first perceived the object of its vengeance; if first 
seen, it died. Dryden has alluded to this superstition : 

" Mischiefs are like the cockatrice's eye, 
If they see first they kill, if seen, they die." 

Cockatrice M-as a popular phrase for a loose woman, prob- 
ably from the fascination of the eye." It appears, too, that 
basilisk^ was the name of a huge piece of ordnance carrying 
a ball of very great weight. In the following passage in 
" Henry V." (v. 2), there is no doubt a double allusion — to 
pieces of ordnance, and to the fabulous creature already de- 
scribed : 

" The fatal balls of murdering basilisks." 

Colt. Trom its wild tricks the colt was formerly used to 
designate, according to Johnson, "a witless, heady, gay 
youngster." Portia mentions it with a quibble in " The 
Merchant of Venice" (i. 2), referring to the Neapolitan 
prince. "Ay, that's a colt, indeed." The term "to colt" 



' Sec " Cymbeline," ii. 4 ; " Winter's Tale," i. 2. 
" Nares's " Glossary," vol. i. p. 173. 

^ Dyce's " Glossary," p. 29 ; see " i Henry IV.," ii. 3, " of basilisks, of 
cannon, culverin." 



176 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

meant to trick, or befool ; as in the phrase in " i Henry IV." 
(ii. 2) : "What a plague mean ye to colt me thus?'" Mr. 
Halliwell-Phillipps' explains the expression in "Henry 
VHI." (i. 3), "Your colt's tooth is not cast yet," to denote 
a love of youthful pleasure. In " Cymbeline " (ii. 4) it is 
used in a coarser sense : " She hath been colted by him." 

Crocodile. According to fabulous accounts the crocodile 
was the most deceitful of animals ; its tears being proverbi- 
ally fallacious. Thus Othello (iv. i) says: 

" O devil, devil ! 
If that the earth could teem with woman's tears, 
Each drop she falls would prove a crocodile. — 
Out of my sight !" 

We may also compare the words of the queen in " 2 Henry 
VI."(iii. I): 

" Henry my lord is cold in great affairs, 
Too full of foolish pity ; and Gloster's show 
Beguiles him, as the mournful crocodile 
With sorrow snares relenting passengers." 

It is said that this treacherous animal weeps over a man's 
head when it has devoured the body, and will then eat up 
the head too. In Bullokar's "Expositor," 1616, we read: 
" Crocodile lachrymje, crocodiles teares, do signify such 
teares as are feigned, and spent only with intent to deceive 
or do harm." In Ouarles's " Emblems" there is the follow- 
ing allusion : 

" O what a crocodilian world is this, 

Compos'd of treachries and ensnaring wiles! 
She cloaths destruction in a formal kiss. 
And lodges death in her deceitful smiles." 

In the above passage from " Othello," Singer says there is, 
no doubt, a reference to the doctrine of equivocal generation, 
by which new animals were supposed to be producible by 
new combinations of matter.^ 

' " Handbook Index to Shakespeare." 

* Singer's " Shakespeare," 1875, vol. x. p. 118. 



ANIMALS. J -j^ 

Deer. In " King Lear " (iii. 4) Edgar uses deer for wild 
animals in general : 

" But mice, and rats, and such small deer, 
Have been Tom's food for seven long year." 

Shakespeare frequently refers to the popular sport of hunt- 
ing the deer ;' and by his apt allusions shows how thorough- 
ly familiar he was with the various amusements of his day." 
In " Winter's Tale " (i. 2) Leontes speaks of " the mort o' 
the deer:" certain notes played on the horn at the death of 
the deer, and requiring a deep-drawn breath.^ It was an- 
ciently, too, one of the customs of the chase for all to stain 
their hands in the blood of the deer as a trophy. Thus, in 
" King John " (ii. i), the English herald declares to the men 
of Anglers how 

" like a jolly troop of huntsmen, come 
Our lusty English, all with purpled hands. 
Dyed in the dying slaughter of their foes." 

The practice is again alluded to in "Julius Caesar" (iii. i): 

" here thy hunters stand, 
Sign'd in thy spoil, and crimson'd in thy lethe." 

Old Turbervile gives us the details of this custom : " Our 
order is, that the prince, or chief, if so please them, do alight, 
and take assay of the deer, with a sharp knife, the which is 
done in this manner — the deer being laid upon his back, the 
prince, chief, or such as they do appoint, comes to it, and the 
chief huntsman, kneeling if it be a prince, doth hold the deer 
by the forefoot, whilst the prince, or chief, do cut a slit drawn 
along the brisket of the deer." 

In " Antony and Cleopatra " (v. 2), where Caesar, speaking 
of Cleopatra's death, says : 

' See Strutt"s " Sports and Pastimes," 1876, pp. 66, 75, 79, 80, 1 13, 1 17. 

"" See "As You Like It," iv. 2 ;" "All's Well That Ends Well," v. 2: 
"Macbeth," iv. 3 ; " i Henry IV.," v. 4; " i Henry VI., " iv. 2 ; "2 Hen- 
ry VI.," V. 2 ; " Titus Andronicus," iii. r, etc. 

' Singer's " Shakespeare," vol. viii. p. 421. 

12 



1^8 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

" bravest at the last, 
She levell'd at our purposes, and, being royal, 
Took her own way " — 

there is possibly an allusion to the Jinrt royal, which had the 
privilege of roaming unmolested, and of taking its own way 
to its lair. 

Shooting with the cross-bow at deer was an amusement 
of great ladies. Buildings with flat roofs, called stands, 
partly concealed by bushes, were erected in the parks for 
the purpose. Hence the following dialogue in " Love's La- 
bour's Lost " (iv. i) : 

"Princess. Then forester, my friend, where is the bush 
That we must stand and play the murderer in ? 

Forester. Hereby, upon the edge of yonder coppice ; 
A stand where you may make the fairest shoot." 

Among the hunting terms to which Shakespeare refers 
may be mentioned the following: 

"To draw" meant to trace the steps of the game, as in 
" Comedy of Errors " (iv. 2) : 

" A hound that runs counter, and yet draws dry-foot well." 

The term " to run counter " ^vas to mistake the course of 
the game, or to turn and pursue the backward trail." 

The " recheat " denoted certain notes sounded on the 
horn, properly and more usually employed to recall the 
dogs from a wrong scent. It is used in " Much Ado About 
Nothing " (i. i) : "I will have a recheat winded in my fore- 
head." We may compare Drayton's " Polyolbion " (xiii.) : 

" Recheating with his horn, which then the hunter cheers." 

The phrase " to recover the wind of me," used by Ham- 
let (iii. 2), is borrowed from hunting, and means to get the 
animal pursued to run with the wind, that it may not scent 
the toil or its pursuers. Again, when Falstaff, in " 2 Henry 
IV." (ii. 4), speaks of " fat rascals," he alludes to the phrase 
of the forest — " rascall," says Puttenham, " being properly 
the hunting term given to a young deer leane and out of 
season." 



ANIMALS. lyg 

The phrase *' a hunts-up " implied any song intended to 
arouse in the morning — even a love song — the name having 
been derived from a tune or song employed by early hunt- 
ers.' The term occurs in " Romeo and Juliet" (iii. 5), where 
Juliet says to Romeo, speaking of the lark: 

" Since arm from arm that voice doth us affray, 
Hunting thee hence v^ith hunts-up to the day." 

In Drayton's " Polyolbion " (xiii.) it is used : 

" No sooner doth the earth her flowery bosom brave, 
At such time as the year brings on the pleasant spring, 
But hunts-up to the morn the feather'd sylvans sing." 

In Shakespeare's day it was customary to hunt as well after 
dinner as before, hence, in " Timon of Athens " (ii. 2), Timon 
says : 

"So soon as dinner's done, we'll forth again." 

The word " embossed " was applied to a deer when foam- 
ing at the mouth from fatigue. In " Taming of the Shrew " 
(Ind. scene i) we read : " the poor cur is embossed," and in 
"Antony and Cleopatra" (iv. 13): 

" the boar of Thessaly 
Was never so emboss'd."' 

It was usual to call a pack of hounds " a cry," from the 
French mcntc dc cJiicns. The term is humorously applied 
to any troop or company of players, as by Hamlet (iii. 2), 
who speaks of " a fellowship in a cry of players." In " Cori- 
olanus " (iv. 6) Menenius says, 

" You have made 
Good work, you and your cry." 

Antony, in " Julius Caesar" (iii. i), alludes to the technical 
phrase to " let slip a dog," employed in hunting the hart. 
This consisted in releasing the hounds from the leash or slip 

* Chappell's " Popular Music of the Olden Time," 2d ed. vol. i. p. 61 ; 
see Douce's " Illustrations of Shakespeare," p. 432 ; see, too, Nares's 
" Glossary," vol. i. p. 440. 



l8o FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

of leather by which they were held in hand until it was 
judged proper to let them pursue the animal chased.' In 
" I Henry IV." (i. 3) Northumberland tells Hotspur : 

" Before the game's afoot, thou still let'st slip." 

In " Taming of the Shrew " (v. 2) Tranio says : 

" O, sir, Lucentio slipp'd me like his greyhound, 
Which runs himself, and catches for his master." 

A sportsman's saying, applied to hounds, occurs in " 2 
Henry IV." (v. 3): "a' will not out; he is true bred," serv- 
ing to expound Gadshill's expression, " such as can hold in," 
" I Henry IV." (ii. i). 

The severity of the game laws under our early monarchs 
was very stringent ; and a clause in the " Forest Charter"^ 
grants " to an archbishop, bishop, earl, or baron, when trav- 
elling through the royal forests, at the king's command, the 
privilege to kill one deer or two in the sight of the forester, 
if he was at hand ; if not, they were commanded to cause a 
horn to be sounded, that it might not appear as if they had 
intended to steal the game." In " Merry Wives of Wind- 
sor" (v. 5), Falstaff, using the terms of the forest, alludes to 
the perquisites of the keeper. Thus he speaks of the " shoul- 
ders for the fellow of this walk," i. c, the keeper. 

Shakespeare has several pretty allusions to the tears of the 
deer, this animal being said to possess a very large secretion 
of tears. Thus Hamdet (iii. 2) says: "let the strucken deer 
go weep ;" and in "As You Like It" (ii. i) we read of the 
" sobbing deer," and in the same scene the first lord nar- 
rates how, at a certain spot, 

" a poor sequester'd stag 
That from the hunter's aim had ta'en a hurt 
Did come to languish ; . . . . 
and the big round tears 
Coursed one another down his innocent nose 
In piteous chase." 

1 See Dyce's " Glossary," p. 401. 

' See Strutt's " Sports and Pastimes," 1876, p, 65. 



ANIMALS. 



I8I 



Bartholomaeus' says, that "when the hart is arered, he 
fleethe to a ryver or ponde, and roreth cryeth and wepeth 
when he is take." ^ It appears that there were various su- 
perstitions connected with the tears of the deer. Batman' 
tells us that " when the hart is sick, and hath eaten many 
serpents for his recovcrie, he is brought unto so great a heate 
that he hasteth to the water, and there covereth his body 
unto the very eares and eyes, at which time distilleth many 
tears from which the [Bezoar] stone is gendered." * Douce ^ 
quotes the following passage from the " Noble Art of Ven- 
erie," in which the hart thus addresses the hunter: 

" O cruell, be content, to take in worth mj^ tears, 
Which growe to gumme, and fall from me: content thee with my 

heares, 
Content thee with my homes, which every year I new, 
Since all these three make medicines, some sickness to eschew. 
My tears congeal'd to gumme, by peeces from me fall. 
And thee preserve from pestilence, in pomander or ball. 
Such wholesome tears shedde I, when thou pursewest me so." 

Z>og: As the favorite of our domestic animals, the dog 
not unnaturally possesses an extensive history, besides en- 
tering largely into those superstitions which, more or less, 
are associated with every stage of human life. It is not sur- 
prising, therefore, that Shakespeare frequently speaks of the 
dog, making it the subject of many of his illustrations. Thus 
he has not omitted to mention the fatal significance of its 
howl, which is supposed either to foretell death or misfort- 
une. In " 2 Henry VI." (i. 4) he makes Bolingbrokc say: 

"The time when screech-owls cry, and ban-dogs howl,* 
And spirits walk, and ghosts break up their graves." 

' " De Proprietate Rerum," lib. xviii. c. 30. 

"^ Cf. Vergil's description of the wounded stag in ".^neid," bk. vii. 

^ Commentary on Bartholomaeus's " Dc Proprietate Rcrum." 

* The drops which fall from their eyes arc not tears from the lach- 
rymal glands, but an oily secretion from the inner angle of the eye 
close to the nose. — Brewer's " Dictionary of Phrase and Fable," p. 217. 

* " Illustrations of Shakespeare," p. 183. 

* These dogs were kept for baiting bears, when that amusement was 



1 82 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

And, again, in " 3 Henry VI." (v. 6), King Henry, speaking 
of Gloster, says : 

" The owl shriek'd at thy birth, — an evil sign ; 
The night-crow cried, aboding luckless time; 
Dogs howl'd, and hideous tempests shook down trees." 

The same superstition prevails in France and Germany,' and 
various charms are resorted to for averting the ill -conse- 
quences supposed to attach to this sign of ill-omen. Several 
of these, too, are practised in our own country. Thus, in 
Staffordshire, when a dog howls, the following advice is 
given : " Take off your shoe from the left foot, and spit 
upon the sole, place it on the ground bottom upwards, and 
your foot upon the place you sat upon, which will not only 
preserve you from harm, but stop the howling of the dog."^ 
A similar remedy is recommended in Norfolk :' " Pull off 
your left shoe, and turn it, and it will quiet him. A dog 
won't howl three times after." We are indebted to antiq- 
uity for this superstition, some of the earliest writers refer- 
ring to it. Thus, Pausanias relates how, previous to the de- 
struction of the Messenians, the dogs pierced the air by rais- 
ing a louder barking than usual ; and it is on record how, A 
before the sedition in Rome, about the dictatorship of Pom- 
pey, there was an extraordinary howling of dogs. Vergil* 
("Georgic," lib. i. 1. 470), speaking of the Roman misfortunes, 

says : 

" Obscenseque canes, importunseque volucres 
Signa dabant." 

Capitolinus narrates, too, how the dogs, by their howling, 
presaged the death of Maximinus. The idea which asso- 
ciates the dog's howl with the approach of death is probably 

in vogue, and " from their terrific howling they are occasionally intro- 
duced to heighten the horror of the picture." Nares's " Glossarj'," 
vol. i. p. 50. 

' See Kelly's " Indo-European Folk-Lore," p. 109. 

^ Henderson's " Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties," p. 48. 

^ See " English Folk-Lore," p. loi. 

* See Hardwick's "Traditions, Superstitions, and Folk-Lore," p. 171. 



ANIMALS. J 83 

derived from a conception in Aryan mythology, which rep- 
resents a dog as summoning the departing soul. Indeed, as 
Mr. Fiske ' remarks, " Throughout all Aryan mythology, the 
souls of the dead are supposed to ride on the night-wind, 
with their howling dogs, gathering into their throng the 
souls of those just dying as they pass by their houses." 

Another popular superstition — in all probability derived 
from the Egyptians — refers to the setting and rising of Siri- 
us, or the dog-star, as infusing madness into the canine race. 
Hence the name of the "dog-days" was given by the Ro- 
mans to the period between the 3d of July and the iith of 
August, to which Shakespeare alludes in " Henry VHI." 
(v. 3) : " the dog-days now reign." We may, too, compare 
the words of Benvolio, in " Romeo and Juliet" (iii. i): 

" For now, these hot days, is the mad blood stirring." 

It is obvious, however, that this superstition is utterly ground- 
less, for not only does the star vary in its rising, but is later 
and later every year. The term " dog-day " is still a com- 
mon phrase, and it is difficult to say whether it is from super- 
stitious adherence to old custom, or from a belief in the in- 
jurious effect of heat upon dogs, that the magistrates, often 
unwisely, at this season of the year order them to be muzzled 
or tied up. It was the practice to put them to death ; and 
Ben Jonson, in his " Bartholomew Fair," speaks of" the dog- 
killer" in this month of August. Lord Bacon, too, in his 
" Sylva Sylvarum," tells us that "it is a common experience 
that dogs know the dog-killer, when, as in times of infection, 
some petty fellow is sent out to kill them. Although they 
have never seen him before, yet they will all come forth and 
bark and fly at him." 

A " curtal dog," to which allusion is made in " Merry 
Wives of Windsor" (ii. i), by Pistol — 

" Hope is a curtal dog in some affairs," 

denoted " originally the dog of an unqualified person, which, 
by the forest laws, must have its tail cut short, partly as a 

' " Myths and Mythmakers," 1S73, p. 36. 



1 84 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



mark, and partly from a notion that the tail of a dog is nec- 
essary to him in running." In later usage, curtail dog means 
either a common dog, not meant for sport, or a dog that 
missed the game, which latter sense it has in the passage 
above.' 

Dragon. As the type and embodiment of the spirit of 
evil, the dragon has been made the subject of an extensive 
legendary lore. The well-known myth of St. George and 
the Dragon," which may be regarded as a grand allegory 
representing the hideous and powerful monster against whom 
the Christian soldier is called to fight, has exercised a re- 
markable influence for good in times past, over half-instruct- 
ed people. It has been truly remarked that " the dullest 
mind and hardest heart could not fail to learn from it some- 
thing of the hatefulness of evil, the beauty of self-sacrifice, 
and the all-conquering might of truth." This graceful con- 
ception is alluded to by Shakespeare, in his " King John " 
(ii. i), where, according to a long-established custom, it is 
made a subject for sign-painting : " 

" St. George, that swinged the dragon, and e'er since, 
Sits on his horseback at mine hostess' door, 
Teach us some fence !" 

In ancient mythology the task of drawing the chariot of 
night was assigned to dragons, on account of their supposed 
watchfulness. In " Cymbeline " (ii. 2) lachimo, addressing 
them, says: 

" Swift, swift, you dragons of the night, that dawning 
May bare the raven's eye !" ^ 

Milton, in his " II Penseroso," mentions the dragon yoke 
of night, and in his " Comus " (1. 130) : 

" the dragon womb 
Of Stygian darkness." 

1 " Nares's Glossary," vol. i. p. 218. 

^ For the various versions of this myth consult Baring-Gould's " Cu- 
rious Myths of the Middle Ages," 1877, pp. 266-316. 

= Cf. "Troilus and Cressida," v. 8; "Midsummer-Night's Dream,'' 
iii. 2. 



ANIMALS. 185 

It may be noticed that the whole tribe of serpents sleep 
with their eyes open, and so appear to exert a constant 
watchfulness.' 

In devising loathsome ingredients for the witches' mess, 
Shakespeare ("Macbeth," iv. i) speaks of "the scale of 
dragon," alluding to the horror in which this mythical being 
was held. Referring, also, to the numerous legends asso- 
ciated with its dread form, he mentions " the spleen of fiery 
dragons " (" Richard III.," v. 3), " dragon's wings " (" i Hen- 
ry VI.," i. i), and ("Pericles," i. i), "death-like dragons." 
Mr. Conway" has admirably summed up the general views 
respecting this imaginary source of terror: " Nearly all the 
dragon forms, whatever their original types and their region, 
are represented in the conventional monster of the Euro- 
pean stage, which meets the popular conception. The drag- 
on is a masterpiece of the popular imagination, and it re- 
quired many generations to give it artistic shape. Every 
Christmas he appears in some London pantomime, with as- 
pect similar to that which he has worn for many ages. His 
body is partly green, with the memories of the sea and of 
slime, and partly brown or dark, with lingering shadow of 
storm clouds. The lightning flames still in his red eyes, 
and flashes from his fire-breathing mouth. The thunder- 
bolt of Jove, the spear of Wodan, are in the barbed point 
of his tail. His huge wings — bat-like, spiked — sum up all 
the mythical life of extinct harpies and vampires. Spine of 
crocodile is on his neck, tail of the serpent, and all the jag- 
ged ridges of rocks and sharp thorns of jungles bristle around 
him, while the ice of glaciers and brassy glitter of sunstrokes 
are in his scales. He is ideal of all that is hard, obstructive, 
perilous, loathsome, horrible in nature ; every detail of him 
has been seen through and vanquished by man, here or 
there, but in selection and combination they rise again 
as principles, and conspire to form one great gcncraliza- 



' Singer's " Shakespeare," vol. x. p. 363. 

* " Demonology and Devil-Lore," 1880, vol. i. p. 383. 



1 86 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

tion of the forms of pain — the sum of every creature's 
worst." ' 

Elephant. According to a vulgar error, current in bygone 
times, the elephant was supposed to have no joints — a no- 
tion which is said to have been first recorded from tradition 
by Ctesias the Cnidian.^ Sir Thomas Browne has entered 
largely into this superstition, arguing, from reason, anatomy, 
and general analogy with other animals, the absurdity of the 
error. In " Troilus and Cressida " (ii. 3), Ulysses says : " The 
elephant hath joints, but none for courtesy : his legs are legs 
for necessity, not for flexure." Steevcns quotes from "The 
Dialogues of Creatures Moralized" — a curious specimen of 
our early natural history — the following: "the olefawnte 
that bowyth not the kneys." In the play of "All Fools," 
1605, we read : " I hope you are no elephant — you have 
joints." In a note to Sir Thomas Browne's Works,' we 
are told, " it has long been the custom for the exhibitors of 
itinerant collections of wild animals, when showing the ele- 
phant, to mention the story of its having no joints, and its 
consequent inability to kneel ; and they never fail to think 
it necessary to demonstrate its untruth by causing the ani- 
mal to bend one of its fore-legs, and to kneel also." 

In " Julius Caesar" (ii. i) the custom of seducing elephants 
into pitfalls, lightly covered with hurdles and turf, on which 
a proper bait to tempt them was exposed, is alluded to.'' 
Decius speaks of elephants being betrayed " with holes." 

Fox. It appears that the term fox was a common ex- 
pression for the old English weapon, the broadsword of Jon- 
son's days, as distinguished from the small (foreign) sword. 
The name was given from the circumstance that Andrea 
Ferrara adopted a fox as the blade-mark of his weapons — 
a practice, since his time, adopted by other foreign sword- 
cutlers. Swords with a running fox rudely engraved on 



' The dragon formerly constituted a part of the morris-dance. 
'■' Sir Thomas Browne's Works, 1852, vol. i. pp. 220-232. 
^ Edited by Simon Wilkin, 1852, vol. i. p. 226. 
* See Pliny's " Natural History," bk. viii. 



ANIMALS. 187 

the blades are still occasionally to be met with in the old 
curiosity shops of London.' Thus, in " Henry V." (iv. 4), 
Pistol says : 

" O Signieur Dew, thou diest on point of fox, 
Except, O signieur, thou do give to me 
Egregious ransom." 

In Ben Jonson's *' Bartholomew Fair" (ii. 6) the expression 
occurs : " What w'ould you have, sister, of a fellow that 
knows nothing but a basket-hilt, and an old fox in it ?" 

The tricks and artifices of a hunted fox were supposed to 
be very extraordinary ; hence Falstaff makes use of this ex- 
pression in " I Henry IV." (iii. 3) : '' No more truth in thee 
than in a drawn fox." 

Goat. It is curious that the harmless goat should have 
had an evil name, and been associated with devil -lore. 
Thus, there is a common superstition in England and Scot- 
land that it is never seen for twenty-four hours together; 
and that once in this space it pays a visit to the devil, in 
order to have its beard combed. It was, formerly, too, a 
popular notion that the devil appeared frequently in the 
shape of a goat, which accounted for his horns and tail. Sir 
Thomas Browne observes that the goat was the emblem of 
the sin-offering, and is the emblem of sinful men at the day 
of judgment. This may, perhaps, account for Shakespeare's 
enumerating the "gall of goat" ("Macbeth," iv. i) among 
the ingredients of the witches' caldron. His object seems 
to have been to include the most distasteful and ill-omened 
things imaginable — a practice shared, indeed, by other poets 
contemporary with him. 

Hare. This was formerly esteemed a melancholy animal, 
and its flesh was supposed to engender melancholy in those 
who ate it. This idea was not confined to our own country, 
but is mentioned by La Fontaine in one of his "Fables" 
(liv. ii. fab. 14) : 



Staunton's " Shakespeare," 1864, vol. ii. p. 367 ; Nares's " Glossar}-," 
vol. i. p. 331. 



l88 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

" Dans un profond ennui ce lievre se plongeoit, 
Cet animal est triste, et la crainte le rounge ;" 

and later on he says : " Le melancolique animal." Hence, 
in " I Henry IV." (i. 2), Falstaff is told by Prince Henry 
that he is as melancholy as a hare. This notion was not 
quite forgotten in Swift's time ; for in his " Polite Conversa- 
tion," Lady Answerall, being asked to eat hare, replies : " No, 
madam ; they say 'tis melancholy meat." Mr. Staunton 
quotes the following extract from Turbervile's book on 
Hunting and Falconry: "The hare first taught us the use 
of the hearbe called wyld succory, which is very excellent 
for those which are disposed to be melancholicke. She her- 
self is one of the most melancholicke beasts that is, and to 
heale her own infirmitie, she goeth commonly to sit under 
that hearbe." 

The old Greek epigram relating to the hare — 

" Strike ye my body, now that life is fled ; 
So hares insult the lion when he's dead," 

— is alluded to by the Bastard in " King John " (ii. i) : 

" You are the hare of whom the proverb goes, 
Whose valour plucks dead lions by the beard." 

A familiar expression among sportsmen for a hare is " Wat," 
so called, perhaps, from its long ears or wattles. Li " Venus 
and Adonis" the term occurs: 

" By this, poor Wat, far off upon a hill, 
Stands on his hinder legs, with listening ear." 

In Drayton's " Polyolbion " (xxiii.) we read : 

"The man whose vacant mind prepares him to the sport, 
The finder sendeth out, to seek out nimble Wat, 
Which crosseth in the field, each furlong, every flat, 
Till he this pretty beast upon the form hath found." 

HedgcJiog. The urchin or hedgehog, like the toad, for its 
solitariness, the ugliness of its appearance, and from a popu- 
lar belief that it sucked or poisoned the udders of cows, was 
adopted into the demonologic system ; and its shape was 



ANIMALS. J 89 

sometimes supposed to be assumed by mischievous elves.' 
Hence, in " The Tempest " (i. 2), Prospero says : 

" Urchins 
Shall, for that vast of night that they may work. 
All exercise on thee ;" 

and later on in the same play (ii. 2) Caliban speaks of being 
frighted with " urchin shows." In the witch scene in " Mac- 
beth" (iv. i) the hedgepig is represented as one of the 
witches' familiars ; and in the " Midsummer-Night's Dream" 
(ii. 2), in the incantation of the fairies, " thorny hedgehogs " 
are exorcised. For the use of urchins in similar associations 
we may quote " Merry Wives of Windsor" (iv. 4), " like ur- 
chins, ouphes, and fairies;" and "Titus Andronicus" (ii. 3), 
"ten thousand swelling toads, as many urchins.'"' In the 
phrase still current, of " little urchin " for a child, the idea 
of the fairy also remains. In various legends we find this 
animal holding a prominent place. Thus, for example, it 
was in the form of a hedgehog ' that the devil is said to have 
made his attempt to let the sea in through the Brighton 
Downs, which was prevented by a light being brought, 
though the seriousness of the scheme is still attested in the 
Devil's Dyke. There is an ancient tradition that when the 
devil had smuggled himself into Noah's Ark he tried to sink 
it by boring a hole ; but this scheme was defeated, and the 
human race saved, by the hedgehog stuffing himself into the 
hole. In the Brighton story, as Mr. Conway points out, the 
devil would appear to have remembered his former failure in 
drowning people, and to have appropriated the form which 
defeated him. In " Richard III." (i. 2), the hedgehog is used 
as a term of reproach by Lady Anne, when addressing 
Gloster. 

Horse. Although Shakespeare's allusions to the horse are 
most extensive, yet he has said little of the many widespread 
superstitions, legends, and traditional tales that have been 

' Singer's " Shakespeare," vol. ix. p. 75. 

^ See Wright's Notes to "The Tempest," 1875, p. 94. 

' Conway's " Demonology and Devil-Lore," 1880, vol. i. p. 122. 



IQO 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



associated from the earliest times with this brave and intel- 
lectual animal. Indeed, even nowadays, both in our own 
country and abroad, many a fairy tale is told and credited 
by the peasantry in which the horse occupies a prominent 
place. It seems to have been a common notion that, at 
night-time, fairies in their nocturnal revels played various 
pranks with horses, often entangling in a thousand knots 
their hair — a superstition to which we referred in our chap- 
ter on Fairies, where Mercutio, in " Romeo and Juliet " (i. 4), 

says : 

" This is that very Mab 
That plats the manes of horses in the night, 
And bakes the elf-locks in foul sluttish hairs, 
"Which, once untangled, much misfortune bodes." 

In " King Lear " (ii. 3), Edgar says : " I'll . . . elf all my hair 
in knots." 

Mr. Hunt, in his " Popular Romances of the West of Eng- 
land " (1871, p. 87), tells us that, when a boy, he was on a 
visit at a farmhouse near Fowey River, and well remembers 
the farmer, with much sorrow, telling the party one morning 
at breakfast, how " the piskie people had been riding Tom 
again." The mane was said to be knotted into fairy stirrups, 
and the farmer said he had no doubt that at least twenty 
small people had sat upon the horse's neck. Warburton ' 
considers that this superstition may have originated from the 
disease called " Plica Polonica." Witches, too, have gener- 
ally been supposed to harass the horse, using it in various 
ways for their fiendish purposes. Thus, there are numerous 
local traditions in which the horse at night-time has been 
ridden by the witches, and found in the morning in an al- 
most prostrate condition, bathed in sweat. 

It was a current notion that a horse-hair dropped into 
corrupted water would soon become an animal. The fact, 
however, is that the hair moves like a living thing because 
a number of animalcule cling to it." This ancient vulgar 
error is mentioned in " Antony and Cleopatra " (i. 2) : 

' Warburton on " Romeo and Juliet," i. 4. 
^ Dyce's "Glossary," p. 104. 



ANIMALS. jQI 

" much is breeding, 
Which, like the courser's hair, hath yet but life. 
And not a serpent's poison." 

Steevens quotes from Churchyard's " Discourse of Rebell- 
ion," 1570: 

" Hit is of kinde much worse than horses heare, 
That lyes in donge, where on vyle serpents brede." 

Dr. Lister, in the " Philosophical Transactions," says that 
these animated horse-hairs are real thread-worms. It was 
asserted that these worms moved like serpents, and were 
poisonous to swallow. Coleridge tells us it was a common 
experiment with boys in Cumberland and Westmoreland to 
lay a horse-hair in water, which, when removed after a time, 
would twirl round the finger and sensibly compress it — hav- 
ing become the supporter of an immense number of small, 
slimy water-lice. 

A horse is said to have a "cloud in his face" when he 
has a dark-colored spot in his forehead between his eyes. 
This gives him a sour look, and, being supposed to indicate 
an ill-temper, is generally considered a great blemish. This 
notion is alluded to in " Antony and Cleopatra " (iii. 2), 
where Agrippa, speaking of Caesar, says : 

" He has a cloud in's face," 

whereupon Enobarbus adds : 

" He were the worse for that, were he a horse ; 
So is he, being a man." 

Burton, in his " Anatomy of Melancholy," uses the phrase 
for the look of a woman : " Every lover admires his mistress, 
though she be very deformed of herselfe — thin, leane, chitty 
face, have clouds in her face," etc. 

" To mose in the chine," a phrase we find in " Taming of 
the Shrew" (iii. 2) — " Possessed with the glanders, and like 
to mose in the chine " — refers to a disorder in horses, also 
known as " mourning in the chine." 

Alluding to the custom associated with horses, we may 
note that a stalking-horse, or stale, was cither a real or arti- 



192 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



ficial one, under cover of which the fowler approached tow- 
ards and shot at his game. It is alhided to in "As You 
Like It " (v. 4) by the Duke, who says of Touchstone : " He 
uses his folly like a stalking-horse, and under the presentation 
of that he shoots his wit." In " Much Ado About Nothing" 
(ii. 3), Claudio says : " Stalk on, stalk on ; the fowl sits." ' In 
"Comedy of Errors" (ii. i), Adriana says: "I am but his 
stale," upon which Malone remarks: "Adriana undoubtedly 
means to compare herself to a stalking-horse, behind whom 
Antipholus shoots at such game as he selects." In " Tam- 
ing of the Shrew," Katharina says to her father (i. i) : 

" is it your will 
To make a stale of me amongst these mates ?'' 

which, says Singer, means " make an object of mockery." 
So in " 3 Henry VI." (iii. 3), Warwick says : 

" Had he none else to make a stale but me ?" 

That it was also a hunting term m.ight be shown, adds 
Dyce," by quotations from various old writers. In the in- 
ventories of the wardrobe belonging to King Henry VIII. 
we frequently find the allowance of certain quantities of 
stuff for the purpose of making " stalking-coats and stalking- 
hose for the use of his majesty."^ 

Again, the forehorse of a team was generally gayly orna- 
mented with tufts and ribbons and bells. Hence, in " All's 
Well That Ends Well " (ii. i), Bertram complains that, be- 
dizened like one of these animals, he will have to squire 
ladies at the court, instead of achieving honor in the wars — 

" I shall stay here the forehorse to a smock, 
Creaking my shoes on the plain masonry. 
Till honour be bought up, and no sword worn 
But one to dance with." 

A familiar name for a common horse was "Cut" — either 
from its being docked or gelded — a name occasionally ap- 

1 See Douce's " Illustrations of Shakespeare," p. 106 ; Nares's " Glos- 
sary," vol. ii. p. 830. ^ " Glossary," p. 412. 
^ See Strutt's " Sports and Pastimes," p. 48. 



ANIMALS. IQ3 

plied to a man as a term of contempt. In " Twelfth Night" 
(ii. 3), Sir Toby Belch says: "Send for money, knight; if 
thou hast her not i' the end, call me cut." In " i Henry IV." 
(ii. I ), the first carrier says: "I prithee, Tom, beat Cut's 
saddle." We may compare, too, what Falstaff says further 
on in the same play (ii. 4): "I tell thee what, Hal, if I tell 
thee a lie, spit in my face, call me horse." Hence, call me 
cut is the same as call mc horse — both expressions having 
been used. 

In Shakespeare's day a race of horses was the term for 
what is now called a stud. So in " Macbeth " (ii. 4), Rosse 
says : 

"And Duncan's horses — a thing most strange and certain — 
Beauteous and swift, the minions of their race, 
Turn'd wild in nature." 

The words " minions of their race," according to Steevens, 
mean the favorite horses on the race-ground. 

Lion. The traditions and stories of the darker ages 
abounded with examples of the lion's generosity. " Upon 
the supposition that these actsof clemency were true, Troilus, 
in the passage below, reasons not improperly (' Troilus and 
Cressida,' v. 3) that to spare against reason, by mere instinct 
and pity, became rather a generous beast than a wise man :" ' 

" Brother, you have a vice of mercy in you, 
Which better fits a hon than a man." 

It is recorded by Pliny" that "the lion alone of all wild 
animals is gentle to those that humble themselves before 
him, and will not touch any such upon their submission, but 
spareth what creature soever lieth prostrate before him." 
Hence Spenser's Una, attended by a lion ; and Perceval's 
lion, in " Morte d'Arthur " (bk. xiv. c. 6). Bartholoma^us says 
the lion's " mercie is known by many and oft ensamplcs : for 
they spare them that lie on the ground." Shakespeare again 
alludes to this notion in " As You Like It" (iv, 3): 

' Singer's "Shakespeare," 1875, vol. vii. p. 277. 
"^ " Natural History," bk. viii. c. 19. 



194 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

" for 'tis 
The royal disposition of that beast 
To prey on nothing that doth seem as dead." 

It was also supposed that the lion would not injure a royal 
prince. Hence, in " i Henry IV." (ii. 4) the Prince says: 
" You are lions too, you ran away upon instinct, you will not 
touch the true prince ; no, fie !" The same notion is alluded 
to by Beaumont and Fletcher in " The Mad Lover" (iv. 5): 

" Fetch the Numidian Hon I brought over ; 
If she be sprung from royal blood, the lion 
He'll do you reverence, else — ■ 

* * ;|: * * H^ 

He'll tear her all to pieces." 

According to some commentators there is an allusion in 
" 3 Henry VI." (i. 3) to the practice of confining lions and 
keeping them without food that they may devour criminals 
exposed to them : 

" So looks the pent-up lion o'er the wretch 
That trembles under his devouring paws." 

Mole. The eyes of the mole are so extremely minute, and 
so perfectly hid in its hair, that our ancestors considered it 
blind — a vulgar error, to which reference is made by Caliban 
in " The Tempest " (iv. i) : 

" Pray you, tread softly, that the blind mole may not 
Hear a foot fall." 

And again by Pericles (i. i) : 

" The blind mole casts 
Copp'd hills towards heaven." 

Hence the expression '' blind as a mole." Alexander Ross' 
absurdly speaks of the mole's eyes as only the " forms of 
eyes," given by nature "rather for ornament than for use; 
as wings are given to the ostrich, w^hich never flies, and a 
long tail to the rat, which serves for no other purpose but 
to be catched sometimes by it." Sir Thomas Browne, how- 

' " Arcana Microcosmi," p. 151. 






ANIMALS. in- 

19-5 

ever, in his " Vulgar Errors" (bk. iii. c. xviii.),' has, with his 
usual minuteness, disproved this idea, remarking " that they 
have eyes in their head is manifested unto any that wants 
them not in his own." A popular term for the mole was the 
"moldwarp" or " mouldiwarp,"" so called from the Anglo- 
Saxon, denoting turning the mould. Thus, in " i Henry IV." 
(iii. i) Hotspur says : 

" sometime he angers me 
With telling me of the moldwarp and the ant." 

Mouse. This word was formerly used as a term of endear- 
ment, from either sex to the other. In this sense it is used 
by Rosaline in " Love's Labour's Lost " (v. 2) : 

" What's your dark meaning, mouse, of this light word .'" 

and again in " Hamlet" (iii. 4). 

Some doubt exists as to the exact meaning of " Mouse- 
hunt," by Lady Capulet, in " Romeo and Juliet " (iv. 4) : 

" Ay, you have been a mouse-hunt in your time, 
But I will watch you from such watching now." 

According to some, the expression implies "a hunter of gay 
women," mouse having been used in this signification.^ 
Others are of opinion that the stoat ^ is meant, the smallest 
of the w^easel tribe, and others again the polecat. Mr. 
Staunton^ tells us that the mouse-hunt is the marten, an 
animal of the weasel tribe which prowls about for its prey at 
night, and is applied to any one of rakish propensities. 

Holinshed, in his "History of Scotland" (1577, P- 181), 
quotes from the laws of Kenneth II., King of Scotland : " If 
a sowe eate her pigges, let hyr be stoned to death and buried, 
that no man eate of hyr fleshe." This offence is probabl}- 



' 1852, vol. i. pp. 312-315. 

"^ See Nares's " Glossary," vol. ii. p. 577 ; Singer's " Shakespeare," 
vol. V. p. ']']. 

' Halliwell-Phillipps's "Handbook Index to Shakespeare," 1866, 

P-33I- 

* Forby's " Vocabulary of East Anglia," vol. ii. p. 222. 
' Sec Staunton's " Shakespeare," vol. i. p. 278. 



jq5 folk-lore of SHAKESPEARE. 

alluded to by Shakespeare in "Macbeth" (iv. i), where the 

witch says : 

" Pour in sow's blood, that hath eaten 
Her nine farrow." 

Polecat, or FitcJictv. This animal is supposed to be very 
amorous ; and hence its name, Mr. Steevens says, was often 
applied to ladies of easy or no virtue. In " Othello " (iv. i) 
Cassio calls Bianca a " fitchew," and in " Troilus and Cressida " 
(v. i) Thersites alludes to it.' 

Porcupine. Another name for this animal was the por- 
pentine, which spelling occurs in " Hamlet " (i. 5) : 

"Like quills upon the fretful porpentine." 

And again, in "2 Henry VI." (iii. i) York speaks of "a 
sharp-quill'd porpentine." Ajax, too, in " Troilus and Cres- 
sida " (ii. i), applies the term to Thersites : " do not, porpen- 
tine." In the above passages, however, and elsewhere, the 
word has been altered by editors to porcupine. According 
to a popular error, the porcupine could dart his quills. They 
are easily detached, very sharp, and slightly barbed, and may 
easily stick to a person's legs, when he is not aware that he 
is near enough to touch them.'' 

Rabbit. In " 2 Henry IV." (ii. 2) this animal is used as a 
term of reproach, a sense in which it was known in Shake- 
speare's day. The phrase " cony-catch," which occurs in 
"Taming of the Shrew" (v. i) — "Take heed, SigniorBaptista, 
lest you be cony-catched in this business" — implied the act 
of deceiving or cheating a simple person — the cony or rabbit 
being considered a foolish animal.^ It has been shown, from 
Dekker's " English Villanies," that the system of cheating 
was carried to a great length in the early part of the seven- 
teenth century, that a collective society of sharpers was called 
"a warren," and their dupes " rabbit -suckers," i. e., young 
rabbit or conies.^ Shakespeare has once used the term to 

' Cf. " King Lear," iv. 6. 

' See Nares's " Glossary," vol. ii. p. 673. 

^ Ibid., vol. ii. p. 189. 

* See D'Israeli's " Curiosities of Literature," vol. iii. p. 78. 



ANIMALS. ig-j 

express harmless roguery, in the "Taming of the Shrew" 
(iv. i). When Grumio will not answer his fellow-servants, 
except in a jesting way, Curtis says to him : " Come, you 
are so full of cony-catching." 

Rat. The fanciful idea that rats were commonly rhymed 
to death, in Ireland, is said to have arisen from some metrical 
charm or incantation, used there for that purpose, to which 
there are constant allusions in old writers. In the " Mer- 
chant of Venice " (iv. i) Shylock says: 

" What if my house be troubled with a rat, 
And I be pleased to give ten thousand ducats 
To have it baned ?" 

And in "As You Like It" (iii. 2), Rosalind says: "I was 
never so be-rhymed since Pythagoras' time, that I was an 
Irish rat, which I can hardly remember." We find it men- 
tioned by Ben Jonson in the " Poetaster" (v. i): 

" Rhime them to death, as they do Irish rats, 
In drumming tunes." 

" The reference, however, is generally referred, in Ireland," 
says Mr. Mackay, " to the supposed potency of the verses 
pronounced by the professional rhymers of Ireland, which, 
according to popular superstition, could not only drive rats 
to destruction, but could absolutely turn a man's face to the 
back of his head." ' 

Sir W. Temple, in his " Essay on Poetry," seems to derive 



' " The strange phrase and the superstition that arose out of it seem 
to have been produced by a mistranslation, by the English-speaking 
population of a considerable portion of Ireland, of two Celtic or Gaelic 
words, 7-ai!, to roar, to shriek, to bellow, to make a great noise on a 
wind instrument; and rann,\o versify, to rhyme. It is well known 
that rats are scared by any great and persistent noise in the house 
which they infest. The Saxon English, as well as Saxon Irish, of 
Shakespeare's time, confounding rann, a rhyme, with ran, a roar, fell 
into the error which led to the English phrase as used by Shake- 
speare." — A)it/giiariait Magazine and Bibliographer, 1882, vol. ii. p. 9, 
" On Some Obscure Words and Celtic Phrases in Shakespeare," by 
Charles Mackay. 



198 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



1 



the idea from the Runic incantations, for, after speaking of 
them in various ways, he adds, " and the proverb of rhyming 
rats to death, came, I suppose, from the same root." 

According to a superstitious notion of considerable anti- 
quity, rats leaving a ship are considered indicative of mis- 
fortune to a vessel, probably from the same idea that crows 
will not build upon trees that are likely to fall. This idea is 
noticed by Shakespeare in " The Tempest " (i. 2), where Pros- 
pero, describing the vessel in which himself and daughter 
had been placed, with the view to their certain destruction 
at sea, says : 

" they hurried us aboard a bark, 

Bore us some leagues to sea ; where they prepared 

A rotten carcass of a boat, not rigg'd, 

Nor tackle, sail, nor mast ; the very rats 

Instinctively have quit it." 

The SJiipping Gazette of April, 1869, contained a communi- 
cation entitled, " A Sailor's Notion about Rats," in which 
the following passage occurs: "It is a well -authenticated 
fact that rats have often been known to leave ships in the 
harbor previous to their being lost at sea. Some of those 
wiseacres who want to convince us against the evidence of 
our senses will call this superstition. As neither I have time, 
nor you space, to cavil with such at present, I shall leave 
them alone in their glory." The fact, however, as Mr. Hard- 
wick has pointed out in his " Traditions, Superstitions, and 
Folk-lore" (1872, p. 251), that rats do sometimes migrate 
from one ship to another, or from one barn or corn-stack to 
another, from various causes, ought to be quite sufficient to 
explain such a superstition. Indeed, a story is told of a cun- 
ning Welsh captain who wanted to get rid of rats that in- 
fested his ship, then lying in the Mersey, at Liverpool. Hav- 
ing found out that there was a vessel laden with cheese in 
the basin, and getting alongside of her about dusk, he left 
all his hatches open, and waited till all the rats were in his 
neighbor's ship, and then moved off. 

Snail. A common amusement among children consists in 
charming snails, in order to induce them to put out their 



ANIMALS. log 

horns — a couplet, such as the following, being repeated on 
the occasion : 

" Peer out, peer out, peer out of your hole, 
Or else I'll beat you as black as a coal." 

In Scotland, it is regarded as a token of fine weather if the 
snail obey the command and put out its horn : ' 

" Snailie, snailie, shoot out your horn. 
And tell us if it will be a bonnie day the morn." 

Shakespeare alludes to snail -charming in the "Merry 
Wives of Windsor" (iv. 2), where Mrs. Page says of Mrs. 
Ford's husband, he " so buffets himself on the forehead, cry- 
ing. Peer out ! peer out ! that any madness I ever yet beheld 
seemed but tameness, civility, and patience, to this his dis- 
temper he is in now." In "Comedy of Errors" (ii. 2), the 
snail is used to denote a lazy person. 

Tiger. It was an ancient belief that this animal roared 
and raged most furiously in stormy and high winds — a piece 
of folk-lore alluded to in "Troilus and Cressida " (i. 3), by 
Nestor, who says : 

" The herd hath more annoyance by the breese 
Than by the tiger; but when the splitting wind 
Makes flexible the knees of knotted oaks. 
And flies fled under shade, why then, the thing of courage, 
As roused with rage, with rage doth sympathize." 

Uiiieorn. In " Julius Ceesar" (ii. 1) Decius tells how " uni- 
corns may be betray'd with trees," alluding to their tradi- 
tionary mode of capture. They are reported to have been 
taken by one who, running behind a tree, eluded the violent 
push the animal was making at him, so that his horn spent 
its force on the trunk, and stuck fast, detaining the animal 
till he was despatched by the hunter.'' In Topsell's " History 
of Beasts" (1658, p. 557), wc read of the unicorn : " He is an 
enemy to the lions, wherefore, as soon as ever a lion secth a 

' See " English Folk-Lore," 1878, p. 120. 

' See Brewer's " Dictionary of Phrase and Fable," p. 922. 



200 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

unicorn, he runneth to a tree for succour, that so when the 
unicorn maketh force at him, he may not only avoid his 
horn, but also destroy him ; for the unicorn, in the swiftness 
of his course, runneth against the tree, wherein his sharp 
horn sticketh fast, that when the lion seeth the unicorn fast- 
ened by the horn, without all danger he falleth upon him 
and killeth him." With this passage we may compare the 
following from Spenser's " Fairy Queen " (bk. ii. canto 5) : 

" Like as a lyon, whose imperiall power 
A prowd rebellious unicorn defyes, 
T' avoide the rash assault and wrathful stowre 
Of his fiers foe, him to a tree applyes, 
And when him ronning in full course he spyes, 
He slips aside : the whiles that furious beast 
His precious home, sought of his enimyes 
Strikes in the stocke, ne thence can be releast, 
But to the mighty victor yields a bounteous feast." 

WcuTscL To meet a weasel was formerly considered a bad 
omen.' That may be a tacit allusion to this superstition in 
" Lucrece " (1. 307) : 

" Night-wandering weasels shriek to see him there ; 
They fright him, yet he still pursues his fear." 

It appears that weasels were kept in houses, instead of cats, 
for the purpose of killing vermin. Phaedrus notices this 
their feline office in the first and fourth fables of his fourth 
book. The supposed quarrelsomeness of this animal is 
spoken of by Pisanio in " Cymbeline " (iii. 4), who tells 
Imogen that she must be " as quarrelous as the weasel ;" 
and in " i Henry IV." (ii. 3), Lady Percy says to Hotspur: 

" A weasel hath not such a deal of spleen 
As you are toss'd with." 

This character of the weasel is not, however, generally 
mentioned by naturalists. 

^ See Brand's " Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. iii. p, 283. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

PLANTS. 

That Shakespeare possessed an extensive knowledge of 
the history and superstitions associated with flowers is evi- 
dent, from even only a slight perusal of his plays. Apart 
from the extensive use which he has made of these lovely 
objects of nature for the purpose of embellishing, or adding 
pathos to, passages here and there, he has also, with a mas- 
ter hand, interwoven many a little legend or superstition, 
thereby infusing an additional force into his writings. Thus 
we know with what effect he has made use of the willow in 
" Othello," in that touching passage where Desdcmona 
(iv. 3), anticipating her death, relates how her mother had a 
maid called Barbara: 

" She was in love ; and he she lov'd prov'd mad, 
And did forsake her ; she had a song of willow, 
An old thing 'twas, but it express'd her fortune. 
And she died singing it : that song, to-night, 
Will not go from my mind." 

In a similar manner Shakespeare has frequently introduced 
flowers with a wonderful aptness, as in the case of poor 
Ophelia. Those, however, desirous of gaining a good 
insight into Shakespeare's knowledge of flowers, as illus- 
trated by his plays, would do well to consult Mr. Ella- 
combe's exhaustive work on the "Plant-Lore of Shake- 
speare," a book to which we are much indebted in the 
following pages, as also to Mr. Biesly's " Shakespeare's 
Garden." 

Aconite^ This plant, from the deadly virulence of its 
I juice, which, Mr. Turner says, " is of all poysones the most 

' Aconitiun napcUus, Wolf's-bane or Monk's-hood. 



232 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

hastie poysone," is compared by Shakespeare to gunpowder, 
as in " 2 Henry IV." (iv. 4) : 

" the united vessel of their blood, 
Mingled with venom of suggestion, 
As, force perforce, the age will pour it in, 
Shall never leak, though it do work as strong 
As aconitum, or rash gunpowder." 

It is, too, probably alluded to in the following passage in 
" Romeo and Juliet " (v. i), where Romeo says: 

" let me have 
A dram of poison ; such soon-speeding gear 
As will disperse itself through all the veins. 
That the life-weary taker may fall dead ; 
And that the trunk may be discharg'd of breath 
As violently, as hasty powder fir'd 
Doth hurry from the fatal cannon's womb." 

According to Ovid, it derived its name from growing upon 
rock (Metamorphoses, bk. vii. I. 418) : 

" Quae, quia nascuntur, dura vivacia caute, 
Agrestes aconita vocant." 

It is probably derived from the Greek uKortroc, " without a 
struggle," in allusion to the intensity of its poisonous quali- 
ties. Vergil' speaks of it, and tells us "how the aconite 
deceives the wretched gatherers, because often mistaken for 
some harmless plant." The ancients fabled it as the inven- 
tion of Hecate,' who caused the plant to spring from the 
foam of Cerberus, when Hercules dragged him from the 
gloomy regions of Pluto. Ovid pictures the stepdame as 
preparing a deadly potion of aconite (Metamorphoses, bk. i. 

" Lurida terribiles miscent aconita novercse." 

In hunting, the ancients poisoned their arrows with this 
venomous plant, as " also when following their mortal brutal 



' " Miseros fallunt aconita legentis " (Georgic, bk. ii. 1. 152). 
^ See Ellacombe's " Plant- Lore of Shakespeare," 1878, pp. 7, 8. 
' Dr. Prior's " Popular Names of British Plants," 1870, pp. i, 2. 



PLANTS. 203 

trade of slaughtering their fellow-creatures." ' Numerous in- 
stances are on record of fatal results through persons eat- 
ing this plant. In the "Philosophical Transactions" (1732, 
vol. xxxvii.) we read of a man who was poisoned in that 
year, by eating some of it in a salad, instead of celery. Dr. 
Turner mentions the case of some Frenchmen at Antwerp, 
who, eating the shoots of this plant for masterwort, all died, 
with the exception of two, in forty-eight hours. The aconi- 
tum is equally pernicious to animals. 

Anemone. This favorite flower of early spring is probably 
alluded to in the following passage of " Venus and Adonis :" 

" By this, the boy that by her side lay kill'd 
Was melted Hke a vapour from her sight ; 
And in his blood, that on the ground lay spill'd, 
A purple flower sprung up, chequer'd with white, 
Resembling well his pale cheeks, and the blood 
Which in round drops upon their whiteness stood." 

According to Bion, it is said to have sprung from the tears 
that Venus wept over the body of Adonis: 

" Alas, the Paphian ! fair Adonis slain ! 
Tears plenteous as his blood she pours amain, 
But gentle flowers are born, and bloom around ; 
From every drop that falls upon the ground 
Where streams his blood, there blushing springs the rose, 
And where a tear has dropp'd a wind-flower blows." 

Other classical writers make the anemone to be the flower 
of Adonis. Mr. Ellacombe' sajs that although Shakespeare 
does not actually name the anemone, yet the evidence is in 
favor of this plant. The " purple color," he adds, is no 
objection, for purple in Shakespeare's time had a very wide 
signification, meaning almost any bright color, just as "pur- 
pureus " had in Latin. ^ 

Apple. Although Shakespeare has so frequently intro- 
duced the apple into his plays, yet he has abstained from 

' Phillips, " Flora Historica," 1829, vol. ii. pp. 122, 128. 

' " Plant-Lore of Shakespeare," pp. 10, 11. 

^ Phillips, " Flora Historica," 1829, vol. i. p. 104. 



204 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



alluding to the extensive folk-lore associated with this favor- 
ite fruit. Indeed, beyond mentioning some of the popular 
nicknames by which the apple was known in his day, little is 
said about it. The term apple was not originally confined 
to the fruit now so called, but was a generic name applied 
to any fruit, as we still speak of the love-apple, pine-apple, 
etc."i So when Shakespeare (Sonnet xciii.) makes mention 
of Eve's apple, he simply means that it was some fruit that 
grew in Eden : 

" How like Eve's apple doth thy beauty grow. 
If thy sweet virtue answer not thy show." 

(a) The "apple-John," called in France dcux-aiinccs ox 
deux-ans, because it will keep two years, and considered to 
be in perfection when shrivelled and withered,^ is evidently 
spoken of in " i Henry IV." (iii. 3), where Falstaff says: 
" My skin hangs about me like an old lady's loose gown ; I 
am withered like an old apple-John." In " 2 Henry IV." 
(ii. 4) there is a further allusion : 

\st Drawer. What the devil hast thou brought there ? apple-Johns.'' 
thou know'st Sir John cannot endure an apple-John. 

id Draruer. Mass, thou sayest true. The prince once set a dish of 
apple-Johns before him, and told him there were five more Sir Johns, 
and, putting off his hat, said, ' I will now take my leave of these six 
dry, round, old, withered knights.'" 

This apple, too, is well described by Phillips (" Cider," bk. i.) : 

" Nor John Apple, whose wither'd rind, entrench'd 
By many a furrow, aptly represents 
Decrepit age." 

In Ben Jonson's " Bartholomew Fair " (i. i), where Little- 
wit encourages Quarlus to kiss his wife, he says : " she may 
call you an apple-John if you use this." Here apple-John' 



' Ellacombe's " Plant- Lore of Shakespeare," p. 1 3. 
'■' Dyce's " Glossary to Shakespeare," p. 15. 

^ See Nares's "Glossary," vol. ii. p. 29 ; probably synonymous with 
the term "apple-Squire," which formerly signified a pimp. 



PLANTS. 205 

evidently means a procuring John, besides the allusion to 
the fruit so called." 

ip) The "bitter-sweet, or sweeting," to which Mercutio 
alludes in "Romeo and Juliet" (ii. 4) : "Thy wit is a very 
bitter sweeting; it is a most sharp sauce;" was apparently 
a favorite apple, which furnished many allusions to poets. 
Gowcr, in his " Confessio Amantis " (1554, fol. 174), speaks 

of it: 

" For all such time of love is lore 
And like unto the bitter swete, 
For though it thinke a man first sweete, 
He shall well felen atte laste 
That it is sower, and maie not laste." 

The name is " now given to an apple of no great value as 
a table fruit, but good as a cider apple, and for use in silk 
dyemg. 

[c) The " crab," roasted before the fire and put into ale, 
was a very favorite indulgence, especially at Christmas, in 
days gone by, and is referred to in the song of winter in 
" Love's Labour's Lost " (v. 2) : 

" When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl 
Then nightly sings the staring owl." 

The beverage thus formed was called " Lambs-wool," and 
generally consisted of ale, nutmeg, sugar, toast, and roasted 
crabs, or apples. It formed the ingredient of the wassail- 
bowl ;* and also of the gossip's bowP alluded to in " r.Iidsum- 
mer-Night's Dream" (ii. i), where Puck says: 

" And sometime lurk I in a gossip's bowl. 
In very likeness of a roasted crab, 
And when she drinks, against her lips I bob, 
And on her wither'd dewlap pour the ale." 

' Forby, in his " Vocabulary of East Anglia," says of this apple, " we 
retain the name, but whether we mean the same variety of fruit which 
was so called in Shakespeare's time, it is not possible to ascertain." 

^ Ellacombe's " Plant-Lore of Shakespeare," p. 16; Dycc's "Glossa- 
ry," p. 430 ; Nares's " Glossary," vol. i. p. 81 ; Coles's " Latin and Eng- 
lish Dictionary." " A bitter-suete [apple] — Amari-mellum." 

' See chapter xi., Customs connected with the Calendar. 

* See chapter on Customs connected with Birth and Baptism. 



2o6 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

In Peele's "Old Wives' Tale," it is said: 

" Lay a crab in the fire to roast for lamb's wool." ' 

And in Herrick's " Poems:" 

" Now crowne the bowle 
With gentle lamb's wooll, 
Add sugar, and nutmegs, and ginger." 

[d) The "codling," spoken of by Malv^olio in "Twelfth 
Night " (i. 5) — " Not yet old enough for a man, nor young 
enough for a boy; as a squash is before 'tis a peascod, or a 
codling when 'tis almost an apple " — is not the variety now 
so called, but was the popular term for an immature apple, 
such as would require cooking to be eaten, being derived 
from " coddle," to stew or boil lightly — hence it denoted a 
boiling apple, an apple for coddling or boiling." Mr. Gifford^ 
says that codling was used by our old writers for that early 
state of vegetation when the fruit, after shaking off the blos- 
som, began to assume a globular and determinate form. 

(r) The "leather-coat" was the apple generally known 
as " the golden russeting." ^ Davy, in " 2 Henry IV." (v. 3), 
.says: "There is a dish of leather-coats for you." 

{/) The "pippin" was formerly a common term for an 
apple, to which reference is made in " Hudibras Redivi- 

vus" (1705): 

" A goldsmith telling o'er his cash, 
A pipping-monger selling trash." 

In Taylor's " Workes " ' (1630) we read : 

" Lord, who would take him for a pippin squire. 
That's so bedaub'd with lace and rich attire .'" 

' Edited by Dyce, 1861, p. 446. Many fanciful derivations for this 
word have been thought of, but it was no doubt named from its smooth- 
ness and softness, resembling the wool of lambs. 

^ Dr. Prior's " Popular Names of British Plants," 1870, p. 50. 

^ Note on Jonson's Works, vol. iv. p. 24. 

* Dyce's " Glossary," p. 242. 

' Quoted by Nares's " Glossary," vol. ii. p. 662. 



PLANTS. 



207 



Mr. Ellacombe' says the word "pippin" denoted an apple 
raised from pips and not from grafts, and " is now, and prob- 
ably was in Shakespeare's time, confined to the bright-col- 
ored long-keeping apples of which the golden pippin is the 
type." Justice Shallow, in " 2 Henry IV." (v. 3), says : " Nay, 
you shall see my orchard, where, in an arbour, we will eat a 
last year's pippin of my own grafifing." 

(^) The "pomewater" was a species of apple evidently 
of a juicy nature, and hence of high esteem in Shakespeare's 
time ; for in " Love's Labour's Lost " (iv. 2) Holofernes says : 
" The deer was, as you know, sajiguis — in blood ; ripe as the 
pomewater, who now hangeth like a jewel in the ear o{ ccclo 
■ — the sky, the welkin, the heaven; and anon falleth like a 
crab on the face of terra — the soil, the land, the earth." 

Parkinson" tells us the " pomewater" is an excellent, good, 
and great whitish apple, full of sap or moisture, somewhat 
pleasant, sharp, but a little bitter withal ; it will not last long, 
the winter's frost soon causing it to rot and perish. 

It appears that apples and caraways were formerly always 
eaten together ; and it is said that they are still served up 
on particular days at Trinity College, Cambridge. This prac- 
tice is probably alluded to by Justice Shallow, in the much- 
disputed passage in " 2 Henry IV." (v. 3), when he speaks of 
eating "a last year's pippin, . . . with a dish of carraways." 
The phrase, too, seems further explained by the following 
quotations from Cogan's " Haven of Health " (1599). After 
stating the virtues of the seed, and some of its uses, he says : 
" For the same purpose carcivay seeds are used to be made 
in comfits, and to be eaten with apples, and surely very good 
for that purpose, for all such things as breed wind would 
be eaten with other things that break wind." Again, in his 
chapter on Apples, he says : " Howbcit wee are wont to cat 
carrawaies or biskets, or some other kind of comfits, or seeds 
together with apples, thereby to breakc winde ingendred by 
them, and surely this is a verie good way for students." 

' "Plant-Lore of Shakespeare," p. 16. 
■ " Theatrum Botanicum," 1640. 



208 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

Mr. Ellacombe,' however, considers that in " the dish of car- 
raways," mentioned by Justice Shallow, neither caraway 
seeds, nor cakes made of caraways, are meant, but the car- 
away or caraway-russet apple. Most of the commentators 
are in favor of one of the former explanations. Mr. Dyce° 
reads caraways in the sense of comfits or confections made 
with caraway-seeds, and quotes from Shadwell's " Woman- 
Captain " the following: " The fruit, crab-apples, sweetings, 
and horse-plumbs ; and for confections, a few carraways in a 
small sawcer, as if his worship's house had been a lousie 
inn." 

Apricot. This word, which is spelled by Shakespeare "ap- 
ricock," occurs in " Richard II." (iii. 4), where the gardener 

says: 

" Go, bind thou up yond dangling apricocks, 
Which, like unruly children, make their sire 
Stoop with oppression of their prodigal weight." 

And in '' A Midsummer-Night's Dream " (iii. i) Titania gives 
directions : 

" Be kind and courteous to this gentleman, 

•^ -^ "^-i '^, "^ 

Feed him with apricocks, and dewberries." 

The spelling " apricock " ° is derived from the Latin pre- 
cox, ox pj'cucoqmis ; and it was called "the precocious tree," 
because it flowered and fruited earlier than the peach. The 
term "apricock" is still in use in Northamptonshire. 

Aspen. According to a mediaeval legend, the perpetual 
motion of this tree dates from its having supplied the wood 
of the Cross, and that its leaves have trembled ever since at 
the recollection of their guilt. De Quincey, in his essay on 
" Modern Superstition," says that this belief is coextensive 
with Christendom. The following verses,* after telling how 
other trees were passed by in the choice of wood for the 

^ " Plant-Lore of Shakespeare," pp. 17, 37. 
^ " Glossary," pp. 65, 66. 

^ See " Notes and Queries," 2d series, bk. i. p. 420. 
* See Henderson's " Folk-Lore of Northern Counties," 1879, PP- 151. 
152. 



PLANTS. 20Q 

Cross, describe the hewing down of the aspen, and the drag- 
ging of it from the forest to Calvary: 

" On the morrow stood she, trembling 
At the awful weight she bore. 
When the sun in midnight blackness 
Darkened on Judea's shore. 

" Still, when not a breeze is stirring, 
When the mist sleeps on the hill, 
And all other trees are moveless. 
Stands the aspen, trembling still." 

The Germans, says Mr. Henderson, have a theory of their 
own, embodied in a httlc poem, which may be thus trans- 
lated : 

" Once, as our Saviour walked with men below, 
His path of mercy through a forest lay ; 
And mark how all the drooping branches show, 
What homage best a silent tree may pay. 

" Only the aspen stands erect and free. 

Scorning to join that v^oiceless worship pure ; 
But see ! He casts one look upon the tree, 
Struck to the heart she trembles evermore !" 

Another legend tells us ' that the aspen was said to have 
been the tree on which Judas hanged himself after the be- 
trayal of his Master, and ever since its leaves have trembled 
with shame. Shakespeare twice alludes to the trembling 
of the aspen. In "Titus Andronicus " (ii. 4) Marcus ex- 
claims: 

" O, had the monster seen those lily hands 
Tremble, like aspen leaves, upon a lute ;" 

and in " 2 Henry IV." (ii. 4) the hostess says : " Feel, mas- 
ters, how I shake. Yea, in very truth, do I, an 'twere an as- 
pen leaf." 

Bachelors Buttons. This was a name given to several 
flowers, and perhaps in Shakespeare's time was more loosely 
applied to any flower in bud. It is now usually understood 
to be a double variety of ranunculus; according to others, 



' Napier's " Folk-Lore of West of Scotland," 1879, p. 124. 
14 



210 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

the Lychnis sylvcstris ; and in some counties it is applied 
to the Scabiosa succisa} According to Gerarde, this plant 
was so called from the similitude of its flowers " to the jag- 
ged cloathe buttons, anciently worne in this kingdome." It 
was formerly supposed, by country people, to have some 
magical effect upon the fortunes of lovers. Hence it was 
customary for young people to carry its flowers in their pock- 
ets, judging of their good or bad success in proportion as 
these retained or lost their freshness. It is to this sort of 
divination that Shakespeare probably refers in " Merry Wives 
of Windsor " (iii. 2), where he makes the hostess say, " What 
say you to young Master Fenton ? he capers, he dances, he 
has eyes of youth, he writes verses, he speaks holiday, he 
smells April and May ; he will carry 't, he will carry 't ; 'tis 
in his buttons ; he will carry 't." Mr. Warter, in one of his 
notes in Southey's ''Commonplace Book" (1851,4th series, 
p. 244), says that this practice was common in his time, in 
Shropshire and Staffordshire. The term '' to wear bache- 
lor's buttons " seems to have grown into a phrase for being 
unmarried.'^ 

Balm. From very early times the balm, or balsam, has 
been valued for its curative properties, and, as such, is allud- 
ed to in " Troilus and Cressida " (i. i) : 

" But, saying thus, instead of oil and balm, 
Thou lay'st in every gash that love hath given me 
The knife that made it." 

In " 3 Henry VI." (iv. 8) King Henry says :' 

" My pity hath been balm to heal their wounds." 
Alcibiades, in " Timon of Athens " (iii. 5), says : 

" Is this the balsam, that the usuring senate 
Pours into captains' wounds ? Banishment !" 

Macbeth, too, in the well-known passage ii. 2, introduces 
it: 

' Dr. Prior's " Popular Names of British Plants," p. 13. 

"■ Nares's "Glossary," vol. i. p. 45. 

^ See " Richard III.," i. 2 ; " Timon of Athens," iii. 5. 



PLANTS. 2 I I 

" Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care, 
The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath, 
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course. 
Chief nourisher in life's feast." 

As the oil of consecration ' it is spoken of by King Rich- 
ard (" Richard II.," iii. 2) : 

" Not all the water in the rough rude sea 
Can wash the balm from an anointed king." 

And again, in " 3 Henry VI." (iii. i). King Henry, when in 
disguise, speaks thus : 

" Thy place is fill'd, thy sceptre wrung from thee, 
Thy balm wash'd off wherewith thou wast anointed : 
No bending knee will call thee Csesar now." 

The origin of balsam, says Mr. Ellacombe,' " was for a long 
time a secret, but it is now known to have been the produce 
of several gum-bearing trees, especially the Pistacia lentiscus 
and the Balsanioxicndron Gilcadcnsc, and now, as then, the 
name is not strictly confined to the produce of any one 
plant." 

Barley. The barley broth, of which the Constable, in 
" Henry V," (iii. 5), spoke so contemptuously as the food of 
English soldiers, was probably beer,'' which long before the 
time of Henry was so celebrated that it gave its name to 
the plant (barley being simply the beer-plant) : 

" Can sodden water, 
A drench for sur-rein'd jades, their barley broth, 
Decoct their cold blood to such valiant heat .'" 

Bay-trcc. The withering and death of this tree were reck- 
oned a prognostic of evil, both in ancient and modern times, 
a notion* to which Shakespeare refers in " Richard II." (ii. 4) : 

" 'Tis thought, the king is dead ; we will not stay. 
The bay-trees in our country are all wither'd " 

' See "2 Henry IV.," iv. 5. 

* " Plant-Lore of Shakespeare," p. 22. 

^ Ellacombe's " Plant-Lore of Shakespeare," p. 23. 

* See Dyce's " Glossary," p. 32. 



212 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

— having obtained it probably from Holinshed, who says: 
" In this yeare, in a manner throughout all the realme of 
Englande, old bale trees withered." Lupton, in his " Syxt 
Booke of Notable Things," mentions this as a bad omen : 
" Neyther falling-sickness, neyther devyll, wyll infest or hurt 
one in that place whereas a bay-tree is. The Romaynes call 
it the plant of the good angel." ^ 

Canioniilc. It was formerly imagined that this plant grew 
the more luxuriantly for being frequently trodden or pressed 
down ; a notion alluded to in " i Henry IV," (ii. 4) by Fal- 
staff: " For though the camomile, the more it is trodden on 
the faster it grows, yet youth, the more it is wasted, the soon- 
er it wears." Nares" considers that the above was evident- 
ly written in ridicule of the following passage, in a book very 
fashionable in Shakespeare's day, Lyly's " Euphues," of which 
it is a parody: "Though the camomile, the more it is trod- 
den and pressed down, the more it spreadeth ; yet the vio- 
let, the oftener it is handled and touched, the sooner it with- 
ereth and decayeth," etc. 

Clover. According to Johnson, the " honey-stalks " in the 
following passage ("Titus Andronicus," iv. 4) are "clover- 
flowers, which contain a sweet juice." It is not uncommon 
for cattle to overcharge themselves with clover, and die, 
hence the allusion by Tamora : 

" I will enchant the old Andronicus 
With words more sweet, and yet more dangerous, 
Than baits to fish, or honey-stalks to sheep." 

Columbine. This was anciently termed " a thankless flow- 
er," and was also emblematical of forsaken lovers. It is 
somewhat doubtful to what Ophelia alludes in " Hamlet " 
(iv. 5), where she seems to address the king : " There's fen- 
nel for you, and columbines." Perhaps she regarded it as 
symbolical of ingratitude. 

Crozv-flozuers. This name, which in Shakespeare's time 

' See also Evelyn's " Sylva," 1776, p. 396. 

" " Glossary," vol. i. p. 150 ; see Dyce's " Glossary," p. 63. 



PLANTS. 2 I ^ 

was applied to the " ragged robin," is now used for the but- 
tercup. It was one of the flowers that poor OpheHa wove 
into her garland (" Hamlet," iv. 7) : 

"There with fantastic garlands did she come 
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples." 

Cnckoo-bnds. Commentators are uncertain to what flower 
Shakespeare refers in " Love's Labour's Lost" (v. 2): 

"When daisies pied and violets blue. 
And lady-smocks all silver-white, 
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue 

Do paint the meadows with delight." 

Mr. Miller, in his " Gardener's Dictionary," says that the 
flower here alluded to is the Ranunculus bulhosus ; but 
Mr, Biesly, in his " Shakespeare's Garden," considers it to 
be the Ranunculus ficaria (lesser celandine), or pile-wort, as 
this flower appears earlier in spring, and is in bloom at the 
same time as the other flowers named in the song. ]\Ir. 
Swinfen Jervis, however, in his " Dictionary of the Language 
of Shakespeare " (1868), decides in favor of cowslips;' and 
Dr. Prior suggests the buds of the crowfoot. At the pres- 
ent day the nickname cuckoo-bud is assigned to the meadow 
cress [Cardaminc pratcnsis). 

Cuckoo-flozvcrs. By this flower, Mr. Biesly" says, the rag- 
ged robin is meant, a well-known meadow and marsh plant, 
with rose-colored flowers and deeply-cut, narrow segments. 
It blossoms at the time the cuckoo comes, hence one of its 
names. In " King Lear" (iv. 4) Cordelia narrates how 

" he was met even now 
As mad as the vex'd sea ; singing aloud ; 
Crown'd with rank fumiter, and furrow weeds, 
With burdocks, hemlock, nettles, cuckoo-flowers, 
Darnel, and all the idle weeds that grow 
In our sustaining corn." 

Cypress. From the earliest times the c}'press has had a 

' See Nares's " Glossary," vol. i. p. 212. 
- "Shakespeare's Garden," p. 143, 



214 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

mournful history, being associated with funerals and church- 
yards, and as such is styled by Spenser " cypress funereal." 
In Ouarles's "Argalus and Parthenia" (1726, bk. iii.) a 

knight is introduced, whose 

" horse was black as jet, 
His furniture was round about beset 
With branches slipt from the sad cypress tree." 

Formerly coffins were frequently made of cypress wood, a 
practice to which Shakespeare probably alludes in " Twelfth 
Night " (ii. 4), where the Clown says : " In sad cypress let me 
be laid." Some, however, prefer' understanding cypress to 
mean " a shroud of Cyprus or cypress " — a fine, transparent 
stuff, similar to crape, either white or black, but more com- 
monly the latter.^ Douce ' thinks that the expression " laid " 
seems more applicable to a coffin than to a shroud, and also 
adds that the shroud is afterwards expressly mentioned by 
itself. 

Daffodil. The daffodil of Shakespeare is the wild daffodil 
which grows so abundantly in many parts of England. Per- 
dita, in "Winter's Tale" (iv. 4), mentions a little piece of 

weather-lore, and tells us how 

"daffodils, 
That come before the swallow dares, and take 
The winds of March with beauty." 

And Autolycus, in the same play (iv. 3), sings thus : 

"When daffodils begin to peer, — 

With, heigh ! the doxy over the dale. 
Why, then comes in the sweet o' the year." 

' See " Winter's Tale," iv. 4 : 

" Lawn as white as driven snow ; 
Cyprus black as e'er was crow." 

Its transparency is alluded to in " Twelfth Night," iii. i : 

" a Cyprus, not a bosom, 
Hides my heart." 

^ See Dyce's "Glossary," 1872, p. 113. 

^ Douce's " Illustrations of Shakespeare," 1839, p. 56. See Mr. 
Gough's " Introduction to Sepulchral Monuments," p. Ixvi. ; also 
Nares's " Glossary," vol. i. p. 221. 



PLANTS. 



215 



Darnel. This plant, like the cockle, was used in Shake- 
speare's day to denote any hurtful weed. Newton,' in his 
" Herbal to the Bible," says that " under the name of cockle 
and darnel is comprehended all vicious, noisome, and unprof- 
itable graine, encombring and hindering good corne." Thus 
Cordelia, in " King Lear " (iv^ 4), says : 

" Darnel, and all the idle weeds that grow- 
In our sustaining corn." 

According to Gerarde, " darnel hurteth the eyes, and 
maketh them dim, if it happen either in corne for breade or 
drinke." Hence, it is said, originated the old proverb, " lolio 
victitare " — applied to such as were dim-sighted. Steevens 
considers that Pucelle, in the following passage from " i Hen- 
ry VI." (iii. 2), alludes to this property of the darnel — mean- 
ing to intimate that the corn she carried with her had pro- 
duced the same effect on the guards of Rouen, otherwise 
they would have seen through her disguise and defeated her 
stratagem : 

" Good morrow, gallants I want ye corn for bread } 
I think the Duke of Burgundy will fast, 
Before he'll buy again at such a rate : 
'Twas full of darnel : do you like the taste ?" 

Date. This fruit of the palm-tree was once a common in- 
gredient in all kinds of pastry, and some other dishes, and 
often supplied a pun for comedy, as, for example, in "All's 
Well That Ends Well" (i. i), where Parolles says: "Your 
date is better in your pie and your porridge, than in your 
cheek. And in " Troilus and Cressida " (i. 2) : '* Ay, a minced 
man ; and then to be baked with no date in the pie ; for 
then the man's date's out." 

Ebony. The wood of this tree was regarded as the typi- 
cal emblem of darkness ; the tree itself, however, was un- 
known in this country in Shakespeare's time. It is men- 
tioned in " Love's Labour's Lost " (iv. 3): 



' See Dr. Prior's " Popular Names of British Plants," 1870, p. 63. 



2i6 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

"King. By heaven, thy love is black as ebony. 
Biron. Is ebony like her .^ O wood divine ! 
A wife of such wood were felicity." 

In the same play we read of " the ebon-coloured ink" (i. i), 
and in " Venus and Adonis " (948) of " Death's ebon dart." 
Eldcj'. This plant, while surrounded by an extensive folk- 
lore, has from time immemorial possessed an evil reputation, 
and been regarded as one of bad omen. According to a 
popular tradition " Judas was hanged on an elder," a super- 
stition mentioned by Biron in " Love's Labour's Lost " (v. 2) ; 
and also by Ben Jonson in " Every Man Out of His Hu- 
mour" (iv. 4) : "He shall be your Judas, and you shall be 
his elder-tree to hang on." In " Piers Plowman's Vision " 
(11. 593-596) we are told how 

"Judas, he japed 
With jewen silver. 
And sithen on an eller 
Hanged hymselve." 

So firmly rooted was this belief in days gone by that Sir 
John Mandeville tells us in his Travels, which he wrote in 
1364, that he was actually shown the identical tree at Jeru- 
salem, "And faste by is zit, the tree of Elder that Judas 
henge himself upon, for despeyr that he hadde when he solde 
and betrayed oure Lord." This tradition no doubt, in a 
great measure, helped to give it its bad fame, causing it to 
be spoken of as " the stinking elder." Shakespeare makes 
it an emblem of grief. In " Cymbeline " (iv. 2) Arviragus 
says: 

" Grow, patience ! 
And let the stinking elder, grief, untwine 
His perishing root with the increasing vine !" 

The dwarf elder' {Sanilniciis cbuliis) is said only to grow 
where blood has been shed either in battle or in murder. 
The Welsh call it " Llysan gward gwyr," or "plant of the 
blood of man." Shakespeare, perhaps, had this piece of 
folk-lore in mind when he represents' Bassianus, in " Titus 

' " Flower-Lore," p. 35. 



PLANTS. 217 

Andronicus" ( ii. 4), as killed at a pit beneath an elder- 
tree : 

"This is the pit and this the elder tree.'' 

Eringocs. These were formerly said to be strong provo- 
catives, and as such are mentioned by Falstaff in " Merry 
Wives of Windsor " (v. 5): " Let the sky rain potatoes; let 
it thunder to the tune of Green Sleeves, hail kissing comfits, 
and snow eringoes." Mr. Ellacombe ' thinks that in this 
passage the globe artichoke is meant, " which is a near ally 
of the eryngium, and was a favorite dish in Shakespeare's 
time." 

Fennel. This was generally considered as an inflammatory 
herb ; and to eat " conger and fennel " was " to eat two high 
and hot things together," which was an act of libertinism.^ 
Thus in " 2 Henry IV." (ii. 4) Falstaff says of Poins, he " eats 
conger and fennel." Mr. Beisly states' that fennel was used 
as a sauce with fish hard of digestion, being aromatic, and as 
the old writers term it, "hot in the third degree," One of 
the herbs distributed by poor Ophelia, in her distraction, is 
fennel, which she offers either as a cordial or as an emblem 
of flattery : " There's fennel for you, and columbines." 

Mr. Staunton, however, considers that fennel here signifies 
lust, while Mr. Beisly thinks its reputed property of clearing 
the sight is alluded to. It is more probable that it denotes 
flattery ; especially as, in Shakespeare's time, it was regarded 
as emblematical of flattery. In this sense it is often quoted 
by old writers. In Greene's " Quip for an Upstart Courtier," 
we read, " Fennell I meane for flatterers." In " Phyala Lach- 
rymarum " ■* we find : 

" Nor fenncl-finkle bring for flatter}-, 
Begot of his, and fained courtcsie." 

Fern. According to a curious notion fern-seed was sup- 
posed to possess the power of rendering persons invisible. 

' " Plant- Lore of Shakespeare," p. 66. 

"^ Nares's " Glossary," vol. i. p. 302 ; Dycc's " Glossarj-,'' p. 1 59. 

' " Shakspere's Garden," p. 158. 

* Quoted in Nares's " Glossary'," vol. i. p. 303. 



2i8 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

Hence it was a most important object of superstition, being 
gathered mystically, especially on Midsummer Eve. It was 
believed at one time to have neither flower nor seed; the 
seed, which lay on the back of the leaf, being so small as to 
escape the detection of the hasty observer. On this account, 
probably, proceeding on the fantastic doctrine of signatures, 
our ancestors derived the notion that those who could ob- 
tain and wear this invisible seed would be themselves invisi- 
ble ; a belief which is referred to in " i Henry IV," (ii. i) : 

" Gadshill. We have the receipt of fern-seed, we walk invisible. 
Chamberlain. Nay, by my faith, I think you are more beholding to 
the night, than to fern-seed, for your walking invisible." 

This superstition is mentioned by many old writers ; a proof 
of its popularity in times past. It is alluded to in Beau- 
mont and Fletcher's " Fair Maid of the Inn " (i. i) : 

" Did you think that you had Gyges' ring } 
Or the herb that gives invisibility.?" 

Again, in Ben Jonson's " New Inn " (i. i) : 

" I had 
No medicine, sir, to go invisible, 
No fern-seed in my pocket." 

As recently as Addison's day, we are told in the Tatler 
(No. 240) that " it was impossible to walk the streets with- 
out having an advertisement thrust into your hand of a doc- 
tor who had arrived at the knowledge of the green and red 
dragon, and had discovered the female fern-seed." ' 

Fig. Formerly the term fig served as a common expres- 
sion of contempt, and was used to denote a thing of the 
least importance. Hence the popular phrase, " not to care 
a fig for one ;" a sense in which it is sometimes used by 
Shakespeare, who makes Pistol say, in " Merry Wives of 
Windsor" (i. 3), " a fico for the phrase !" and in " Henry V." 
(iii. 6) Pistol exclaims, " figo for thy friendship !" In " Othel- 
lo " (i. 3) lago says, " Virtue ! a fig !" 

The term " to give or make the fig," as an expression of 



' See Brand's " Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. i. pp. 314-316. 



PLANTS. 



219 



insult, has for many ages been very prevalent among the na- 
tions of Europe, and, according to Douce,' was known to the 
Romans. It consists in thrusting the thumb between two 
of the closed fingers, or into the mouth, a practice, as some 
say,^ in allusion to a contemptuous punishment inflicted on 
the Milanese, by the Emperor Frederic Barbarossa, in 1162, 
when he took their city. This, however, is altogether im- 
probable, the real origin, no doubt, being a coarse represen- 
tation of a disease, to which the name of ficiis or fig has 
always been given. ^ 

The " fig of Spain," spoken of in " Henry V." (iii. 6), may 
either allude to the poisoned fig employed in Spain as a se- 
cret way of destroying an obnoxious person, as in Webster's 
'' White Devil :" ' 

" I do look now for a Spanish fig, or an Italian salad, daily ;" 

and in Shirley's " Brothers:"^ 

" I must poison him ; 
One fig sends him to Erebus ;'' 

or it may, as Mr. Dyce remarks," simply denote contempt or 
insult in the sense already mentioned. 

Floiver-de-lucc. The common purple iris which adorns 
our gardens is now generally agreed upon as the fleur-de- 
luce, a corruption of fleur de Louis — being spelled either flcur- 
de-lys or fleur-de-lis. It derives its name from Louis VII., 
King of France, who chose this flower as his heraldic em- 
blem when setting forth on his crusade to the Holy Land. 
It had already been used by the other French kings, and by 
the emperors of Constantinople; but it is still a matter of 

' " Illustrations of Shakespeare," pp. 302-308. 

" See Nares's " Glossary," vol. i. p. 305. 

= See GifTord's note on Jonson's Works, vol. i. p. 52 ; Dyce's "Glos- 
sary," p. 161 ; Du Ganges " Glossary ;" Connelly's " Spanish and Eng- 
lish Dictionary," 4to. 

* Edited by Dyce, 1857, p. 30. 

=^ Edited by Gifford and Dyce, vol. i. p. 231. 

* "Glossary," p. 161. 



220 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

dispute among antiquarians as to what it was originally in- 
tended to represent. Some say a flower, some a toad, some 
a halbert-head. It is uncertain what plant is referred to by 
Shakespeare when he alludes to the flower-de-luce in the 
following passage' in " 2 Henry VI." (v. i), where the Duke 
of York says : 

"A sceptre shall it have, — have I a soul, — 
On which I'll toss the flower-de-luce of France." 

In " I Henry VI." (i. 2) Pucelle declares: 

"I am prepared ; here is my keen-edged sword, 
Deck'd with five flower-de-luces on each side." 

Some think the lily is meant, others the iris. For the lily 
theory, says Mr. Ellacombe,'' " there are the facts that Shake- 
speare calls it one of the lilies, and that the other way of 
spelling is fleur-de-lys." 

Chaucer seems to connect it with the lily (" Canterbury 
Tales," Prol. 238): 

" Her nekke was white as the flour-de-lis." 

On the other hand, Spenser separates the lilies from the 
flower-de-luces in his " Shepherd's Calendar ;" and Ben Jon- 
son mentions " rich carnations, flower-de-luces, lilies." 

The fleur-de-lis was not always confined to royalty as a 
badge. Thus, in the square of La Pucelle, in Rouen, there 
is a statue of Jeanne D'Arc with fleurs-de-lis sculptured upon 
it, and an inscription as follows : 

" The maiden's sword protects the royal crown ; 
Beneath the maiden's sword the lilies safely blow." 

St. Louis conferred upon the Chateaubriands the device 
of a fleur-de-lis, and the motto, " Mon sang teint les banni^rs 
de France." When Edward III. claimed the crown of France, 
in the year 1340, he quartered the ancient shield of France 
with the lions of England. It disappeared, however, from 
the English shield in the first year of the present century, 

' See " Winter's Tale," iv, 3 ; " Henry V.," v. 2 ; " i Henry VI.," i. i. 
* " Plant-Lore of Shakespeare," p. 73. 



PLANTS. 



22 1 



Gillyfloiucr. This was the old name for the whole class 
of carnations, pinks, and sweet-williams, from the F"rench 
girojie, which is itself corrupted from the Latin caryopJiyl- 
liim.^ The streaked gillyflowers, says Mr. Beisly,' noticed 
by Perdita in " Winter's Tale " (iv. 4) — 

" the fairest flowers o' the season 
Are our carnations and streak'd gillyvors, 
Which some call nature's bastards " — 

" are produced by the flowers of one kind being impregnated 
by the pollen of another kind, and this art (or law) in nature 
Shakespeare alludes to in the delicate language used by Per- 
dita, as well as to the practice of increasing the plants by 
slips." Tusser, in his " P"ive Hundred Points of Good Hus- 
bandry," says : 

" The gilloflower also the skilful doe know, 
Doth look to be cov^ered in frost and in snow." 

Harebell. This flower, mentioned in ''Cymbeline " (iv. 2), 
is no doubt another name for the wild hyacinth. 
Arviragus says of Imogen: 

" thou shalt not lack 
The flower that's like thy face, pale primrose; nor 
The azured harebell, like thy veins." 

Hemlock. In consequence of its bad and poisonous char- 
acter, this plant was considered an appropriate ingredient 
for witches' broth. In " Macbeth " (iv. i) we read of 

" Root of hemlock, digged i' the dark." 

Its scientific x\2SC\Q.^eoniiiin, is from the Greek word meaning 
cone or top, whose whirling motion resembles the giddiness 
produced on the constitution by its poisonous juice. It is 
by most persons supposed to be the death -drink of the 
Greeks, and the one by which Socrates was put to death. 

Herb of Grace or Herb Grace. A popular name in days 
gone by for rue. The origin of the term is uncertain. Most 

' " Nares's Glossary," vol. i. p. 363. 

° " Shakespeare's Garden," p. 82 ; see Dyce's " Glossary," p. 184. 



222 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

probably it arose from the extreme bitterness of the plant, 
which, as it had always borne the name rue (to be sorry for 
anything), was not unnaturally associated with repentance. 
It was, therefore, the herb of repentance,' " and this was soon 
changed into ' herb of grace,' repentance being the chief sign 
of grace." The expression is several times used by Shake- 
speare. In " Richard II." (iii. 4) the gardener narrates: 

" Here did she fall a tear ; here, in this place 
I'll set a bank of rue, sour herb of grace : 
Rue, even for ruth, here shortly shall be seen, 
In the remembrance of a weeping queen." 

In " Hamlet " (iv. 5), Ophelia, when addressing the queen, 
says, " There's rue for you ; and here's some for me : we may 
call it herb-grace o' Sundays : O, you must wear your rue 
with a difference." " 

Malone observes that there is no ground for supposing 
that rue was called " herb of grace " from its being used in 
exorcisms in churches on Sunday, a notion entertained by 
Jeremy Taylor, who says, referring to the Flagclhim Dcsino- 
nunt, " First, they (the Romish exorcisers) are to try the 
devil by holy water, incense, sulphur, rue, which from thence, 
as we suppose, came to be called ' herb of grace.' " ' Rue 
was also a common subject of puns, from being the same 
word which signified sorrow or pity (see " Richard II.," iii. 
4, cited above). 

Holy Thistle. The Carduus Benedictus, called also " bless- 
ed thistle," was so named, like other plants which bear the 
specific name of" blessed," from its supposed power of coun- 
teracting the effect of poison." Cogan, in his " Haven of 

' Ellacombe's " Plant-Lore of Shakespeare," p. 204 ; Prior's " Popu- 
lar Names of British Plants," 1870, p. 1 1 1. 

^ Cf. " All's Well that Ends Well," iv. 5 ; " Antony and Cleopatra," 
iv. 2 ; " Romeo and Juliet," ii. 3, where Friar Laurence says : 

" In man as well as herbs, grace and rude will." 

' " A Dissuasive from Popery," pt. i. chap. ii. sec. 9 ; see Dyce's 
" Glossary," p. 371. 

* Nares's " Glossary," vol. i. p. 464. 



PLANTS. 22^ 

Health," 1595, says, "This herbc may worthily be called 
Benedictus, or Omnimorbia, that is, a salve for every sore, not 
known to physitians of old time, but lately revealed by the 
special providence of Almighty God." It is alluded to in 
" Much Ado About Nothing " (iii. 4) : 

"Margaret. Get you some of this distilled Carduus Benedictus, and 
lay it to your heart ; it is the only thing for a qualm. 

Hero. There thou prickest her with a thistle. 

Beatrice. Benedictus ! why Benedictus ? you have some moral in 
this Benedictus. 

Margaret. Moral .'' no, by my troth, I have no moral meaning : I 
meant, plain holy-thistle." 

Insane Root. There is much doubt as to what plant is 
meant by Banquo in " Macbeth " (i. 3) : 

" have we eaten on the insane root 
That takes the reason prisoner T' 

The origin of this passage is probably to be found in 
North's " Plutarch," 1579 (" Life of Antony," p. 990), where 
mention is made of a plant which "made them out of their 
wits." Several plants have been suggested — the hemlock, 
belladonna, mandrake, henbane, etc. Douce supports the 
last, and cites the following passage:' "Henbane ... is 
called insana, mad, for the use thereof is perillous ; for if it 
be eate or dronke, it breedeth madness, or slow lykenesse of 
sleepe." Nares^ quotes from Ben Jonson (" Sejanus," iii. 2), 
in support of hemlock: 

" well, read my charms. 

And may they lay that hold upon thy senses 

As thou hadst snufft up hemlock." 

Ivy. It was formerly the general custom in England, as 
it is still in France and the Netherlands, to hang a bush of 
ivy at the door of a vintner.^ Hence the allusion in "As 

' Batman's " Upon Bartholomaeus de Proprietate Rerum," lib. xvii. 
chap. 87. 
* "Glossary," vol. i. p. 465. 
^ See Hotten's " History of Sign Boards." 



224 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



You Like It " (v. 4, Epilogue), where Rosalind wittily re- 
marks : " If it be true that good wine needs no bush, 'tis true 
that a good play needs no epilogue." This custom is often 
referred to by our old writers, as, for instance, in Nash's 
"Summer's Last Will and Testament," 1600: 

" Green ivy bushes at the vintner's doors." 

And in the "Rival Friends," 1632: 

" 'Tis like the ivy bush unto a tavern." 

This plant was no doubt chosen from its being sacred to 
Bacchus. The practice was observed at statute hirings, 
wakes, etc., by people who sold ale at no other time. The 
manner, says Mr. Singer,' in which they were decorated ap- 
pears from a passage in Florio's " Italian Dictionary," in 
voce ircinola, " Gold foile, or thin leaves of gold or silver, 
namely, thinne plate, as our vintners adorn their bushes 
wath." We may compare the old sign of "An ow4 in an ivy 
bush," which perhaps denoted the union of wisdom or pru- 
dence with conviviality, with the phrase " be merry and 
wise." 

Kccksics. These are the dry, hollow stalks of hemlock. 
In " Henry V." (v. 2) Burgundy makes use of the word: 

" and nothing teems. 
But hateful docks, rough thistles, kecksies, burs, 
Losing both beauty and utility." 

It has been suggested" that kecksies may be a mistaken 
form of the plural kex ; and that kex may have been formed 
from keck, something so dry that the eater would keck at it, 
or be unable to swallow it. The word is probably derived 
from the Welsh " cecys," which is applied to several plants of 
the umbelliferous kind. Dr. Prior,' however, says that keck- 
sies is from an old English word keek, or kike, retained in 
the northern counties in the sense of " peep " or " spy." 

' " Shakespeare," vol. iii. p. 112. 

'^ See Nares's "Glossary," vol. ii. p. 482. 

^ " Popular Names of British Plants," 1879, p. 128. 



PLANTS. 225 

Knotgrass} The allusion to this plant in "A Midsum- 
mer-Night's Dream " (iii. 2) — 

" Get you gone, you dwarf ! 
You minimus, of hindering knot-grass made; 
You bead, you acorn !" — 

refers to its supposed power of hindering the growth of 
any child or animal, when taken in an infusion, a notion 
alluded to by Beaumont and Fletcher (" Coxcombe," ii. 2) : 

"We want a boy extremely for this function, 
Kept under for a year with milk and knot-grass." 

In "The Knight of the Burning Pestle" (ii. 2) we read : " The 
child's a fatherless child, and say they should put him into a 
strait pair of gaskins, 'twere worse than knot-grass ; he would 
never grow after it." 

Lady-smocks. This plant is so called from the resem- 
blance of its white flowers to little smocks hung out to dry 
(" Love's Labour's Lost," v. 2), as they used to be at that 
season of the year especially 

"When daisies pied, and violets blue. 
And lady-smocks all silver white, 
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue, 

Do paint the meadows with delight, 
* * * * * 

When shepherds pipe on oaten straws, 
***** 
And maidens bleach their summer smocks." 

According to another explanation, the lady-smock is a 
corruption of " Our Lady's Smock," so called from its first 
flowering about Lady-tide. This plant has also been called 
cuckoo-flower, because, as Gerarde says, " it flowers in April 
and May, when the cuckoo doth begin to sing her pleasant 
notes without stammering." 

Laurel. From the very cailiest times this classical plant 
has been regarded as symbolical of victory, and used for 
crowns. In " Titus Andronicus " (i. i) Titus says : 
"Cometh Andronicus, bound with laurel boughs." 

' Polygonum avicitlare. 
15 



226 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

And in "Antony and Cleopatra" (i. 3) the latter exclaims: 

" upon your sword 
Sit laurelled victory." ' 

Lcck. The first of March is observed by the Welsh in 
honor of St. David, their patron saint, when, as a sign of 
their patriotism, they wear a leek. Much doubt exists\s to 
the origin of this custom. According to the Welsh, it is be- 
cause St. David ordered his Britons to place leeks' in their 
caps, that they might be distinguished in fight from their 
Saxon foes. Shakespeare, in '' Henry V." (iv. 7), alludes to 
the custom when referring to the battle of Cressy. Pluellen 
says, " If your majesties is remembered of it, the Welshmen 
did good service in a garden where leeks did grow, wearing 
leeks in their Monmouth caps, which your majesty know to 
this hour is an honourable badge of the service ; and I do 
believe your majesty takes no scorn to wear the leek upon 
Saint Tavy's day."^ Dr. Owen Pughe =" supposes the cus- 
tom arose from the practice of every farmer contributing his 
leek to the common repast when they met at the Cymmor- 
tha, an association by which they reciprocated assistance in 
ploughing the land. Anyhow, the subject is one involved 
in complete uncertainty, and the various explanations given 
are purely conjectural (see p. 303). 

Lily. Although so many pretty legends and romantic 
superstitions have clustered round this sweet and favorite 
flower, yet they have escaped the notice of Shakespeare, who, 
while attaching to it the choicest epithets, has simply made 
it the type of elegance and beauty, and the symbol of purity 
and whiteness. 

Long Purples. This plant, mentioned by Shakespeare in 
" Hamlet" (iv. 7) as forming part of the nosegay of poor 
Opheha, is generally considered to be the early purple orchis 
{Orchis masculd), which blossoms in April or May. It grows 

' See "3 Henry VI.," iv. 6 ; "Troilus and Cressida," i. 3. 
- See " Henry V.," iv. i. 

^ "Cambrian Biography," 1803, P- 86; see Brand's "Pop. Antiq.," 
1849, vol. i. pp. 102-108. 



PLANTS. 227 

in meadows and pastures, and is about ten inches high. 
Tennyson ("A Dirge") uses the name: 

" Round thee blow, self-pleached deep, 
Bramble roses, faint and pale. 
And long purples of the dale." 

Another term appHed by Shakespeare to this flower was 
" Dead Men's Fingers," from the pale color and hand-like 
shape of the palmate tubers : 

" Our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them." 

In " Flowers from Stratford-on-Avon," it is said, " there 
can be no doubt that the wild arum is the plant alluded to 
by Shakespeare," but there seems no authority for this state- 
ment. 

Lovc-in-IdlcncsSy or, with more accuracy, Lovc-in-Idlc^ is 
one of the many nicknames of the pansy or heart's-ease — a 
term said to be still in use in Warwickshire. It occurs in 
" Midsummer-Night's Dream " (ii. i)," where Obcron says: 

" Yet mark'd I where the bolt of Cupid fell : 
It fell upon a little western flower, 
Before milk-white, now purple with love's wound, 
And maidens call it love-in-idleness." 

The phrase literally signifies love in vain, or to no purpose, 
as Taylor alludes to it in the following couplet : 

" When passions are let loose without a bridle. 
Then precious time is turned to love and idle P 

That flowers, and pansies especially, were used as love- 
philters,' or for the object of casting a spell over people, in 
Shakespeare's day, is shown in the passage already quoted, 



* See Dr. Prior's " Popular Names of British Plants," 1870, p. 139. 

* Cf. " Taming of the Shrew," i. i. 

' Cf. what Egeus says (i. i) when speaking of Lysander : 

" This man hath bcwitch'd the bosom of my child ; 
Thou, thou L3^sander, thou hast given her rhymes 
And interchanged love-tokens with m}^ child." 



228 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

where Puck and Oberon amuse themselves at Titania's ex- 
pense. Again, a further reference occurs (iv. i), where the 
fairy king removes the spell : 

" But first I will release the fairy queen. 
Be as thou wast wont to be : 
See as thou wast wont to see : 
Dian's bud ' o'er Cupid's flower^ 
Hath such force and blessed power. 
Now, my Titania ; wake you, my sweet queen." 

" It has been suggested," says Mr. Aldis Wright,^ " that 
the device employed by Oberon to enchant Titania by 
anointing her eyelids with the juice of a flower, may have 
been borrowed by Shakespeare from the Spanish romance 
of ' Diana' by George of Montemayor. But apart from the 
difficulty which arises from the fact that no English transla- 
tion of this romance is known before that published by Young 
in 1598) there is no necessity to suppose that Shakespeare 
was indebted to any one for what must have been a familiar 
element in all incantations at a time when a belief in witch- 
craft was common." Percy (" Reliques," vol. iii. bk. 2) quotes a 
receipt by the celebrated astrologer. Dr. Dee, for " an ungent 
to anoynt under the eyelids, and upon the eyelids eveninge 
and morninge, but especially when you call," that is, upon 
the fairies. It consisted of a decoction of various flowers. 

Mandragora or Alandrakc. No plant, perhaps, has had, 
at different times, a greater share of folk-lore attributed to 
it than the mandrake ; partly owing, probably, to the fancied 
resemblance of its root to the human figure, and the acci- 
dental circumstance of man being the first syllable of the 
word. An inferior degree of animal life was assigned to it ; 
and it was commonly supposed that, when torn from the 
ground, it uttered groans of so pernicious a character, that 

' Dian's bud is the bud of the Agnus castus, or chaste tree. " The 
virtue this herbe is, that he will kepe man and woman chaste." " Ma- 
cer's Herbal," 1527. 

"^ Cupid's flower, another name for the pansy. 

' Notes to " A Midsummer-Night's Dream," 1877. Preface, p. xx. 



PLANTS. 229 

the person who committed the violence either went mad or 
died. In " 2 Henry VI." (iii. 2) Suffolk says : 

" Would curses kill, as doth the mandrake's groan, 
I would invent," etc. 

And Juliet (" Romeo and Juliet," iv. 3) speaks of 

"shrieks like mandrakes' torn out of the earth, 
That living mortals, hearing them, run mad." 

To escape this danger, it was recommended to tie one end 
of a string to the plant and the other to a dog, upon whom 
the fatal groan would discharge its whole malignity. The 
ancients, it appears, were equally superstitious with regard 
to this mysterious plant, and Columella, in his directions for 
the site of gardens, says they may be formed where 

''the mandrake's flowers 
Produce, whose root shows half a man, whose juice 
With madness ctrikec." 

Pliny ' informs us that those who dug up this plant paid 
particular attention to stand so that the wind was at their 
back ; and, before they began to dig, they made three circles 
round the plant with the point of the sword, and then, pro- 
ceeding to the west, commenced digging it up. It seems to 
have been well known as an opiate in the time of Shake- 
speare, who makes lago say in " Othello " (iii. 3) : 

" Not poppy, nor mandragora. 
Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world, 
Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep 
Which thou ow'dst yesterday." 

In "Antony and Cleopatra" (i. 5), the queen pathetically 
says : 

"Give me to drink mandragora. 
Char. Why, madam ? 

Cleo. That I might sleep out this great gap of time, 
My Antony is away." 

Lyte, in his translation of " Dodoens " (1578), p. 438, tells 
' " Natural History," bk. xxv. chap. 94. 



230 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



US that " the leaves and fruit be also dangerous, for they 
cause deadly sleepe, and peevish drowsiness, like opium." 
It was sometimes regarded as an emblem of incontinence, 
as in ''2 Henry IV." (iii. 2) : "yet lecherous as a monkey, 
and the whores called him — mandrake." A very diminutive 
figure was, too, often compared to a mandrake. In " 2 Henry 
IV." (i. 2), F'alstaff says : " Thou whoreson mandrake, thou 
art fitter to be worn in my cap, than to wait at my heels." 
Tracing back the history of this plant into far-distant times, 
it is generally believed that it is the same as that which the 
ancient Hebrews called Dudain.' That these people held 
it in the highest esteem in the days of Jacob is evident 
from its having been found by Reuben, who carried the 
plant to his mother ; and the inducement which tempted 
Leah to part with it proves the value then set upon this 
celebrated plant. According to a curious superstition, this 
plant was thought to possess the properties of making child- 
less wives become mothers, and hence, some suppose, Rachel 
became so desirous of possessing the mandrakes which Reu- 
ben had found. Among the many other items of folk-lore 
associated with the mandrake, there is one which informs us 
that " it is perpetually watched over by Satan, and if it be 
pulled up at certain holy times, and with certain invocations, 
the evil spirit will appear to do the bidding of the practi- 
tioner."^ In comparatively recent times, quacks and impos- 
tors counterfeited with the root briony figures resembling 
parts of the human body, which were sold to the credulous 
as endued with specific virtues.^ The Germans, too, equally 
superstitious, formed little idols of the roots of the mandrake, 
which were regularly dressed every day, and consulted as or- 
acles — their repute being such that they were manufactured 
in great numbers, and sold in cases. They were, also, im- 
ported into this country during the time of Henry VIII., it 

' Phillips's " Flora Historica,'' 1829, vol. i. pp. 324, 325 ; see Smith's 
" Dictionary of the Bible," 1869, vol. ii. p. 1777. 

^ "Mystic Trees and Flowers," by M. D. Conway; Fraser's Maga- 
zine, 1870, vol. ii. p. 705. 

' Singer's " Shakespeare,'' 1875, vol. v. p. 1 53. 



PLANTS. 



231 



being pretended that they would, with the assistance of 
some mystic words, increase whatever money was placed 
near them. In order, too, to enhance the value of these so- 
called miracle-workers, it was said that the roots of this plant 
were produced from the flesh of criminals which fell from the 
gibbet, and that it only grew in such a situation.' 

lilarigold. This flower was a great favorite with our old 
writers, from a curious notion that it always opened or shut 
its flowers at the sun's bidding; in allusion to which Perdita 
remarks, in " Winter's Tale " (iv. 3) : 

" The marigold, that goes to bed wi' the sun. 
And with him rises weeping." 

It was also said, but erroneously, to turn its flowers to the 
sun, a quality attributed to the sunflower {HcliantJuis anniius), 
and thus described by Moore : 

" The sunflower turns on her god when he sets 

The same look which she turn'd when he rose.'' 

A popular name for the marigold was "mary-bud," men- 
tion of which we find in " Cymbeline " (ii. 3) : 

"winking Mary-buds begin 
To ope their golden eyes.'' 

Medlar. This fruit, which Shakespeare describes as only 
fit to be eaten when rotten, is applied by Lucio to a wom- 
an of loose character, as in " Measure for Measure " (iv. 3) : 
"they would else have married me to the rotten medlar," 

Chaucer, in the " Reeve's Prologue," applies the same 
name to it : 

" That ilke fruit is ever lenger the wers. 
Till it be roten in mullok, or in stre. 
We olde men, I drede, so faren we. 
Till we be roten can we not be ripe.'' 

Mistletoe. This plant, which, from the earliest times, has 
been an object of interest to naturalists, on account of its 
curious growth, deriving its subsistence entirely from the 

' See Sir Thomas Browne's " Vulgar Errors," 1852, vol. ii, p. 6. 



2^2 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

branch to which it annexes itself, has been the subject of 
widespread superstition. In " Titus Andronicus " (ii. 3), Ta- 
mora describes it in the graphic passage below as the " bale- 
ful mistletoe," an epithet which, as Mr. Douce observes, is 
extremely appropriate, either conformably to an ancient, but 
erroneous, opinion, that the berries of the mistletoe were 
poisonous, or on account of the use made of this plant by 
the Druids during their detestable human sacrifices.* 

"Demetrius. How now, dear sovereign, and our gracious mother. 
Why doth your highness look so pale and wan ? 

Tamora. Have I not reason, think you, to look pale ? 
These two have 'tic'd me hither to this place : — 
A barren detested vale, you see, it is ; 
The trees, though summer, yet forlorn and lean, 
O'ercome with moss and baleful mistletoe : 
Here never shines the sun ; here nothing breeds, 
Unless the nightly owl, or fatal raven." 

ISIushrooin. Besides his notice of the mushroom in the 
following passages, Shakespeare alludes to the fairy rings' 
which are formed by fungi, though, as Mr. Ellacombe^ points 
out, he probably knew little of this. In " The Tempest" (v. 
i), Prospero says of the fairies: 

" you demi-puppets, that 
By moonshine do the green-sour ringlets make. 
Whereof the ewe not bites ; and you, whose pastime 
Is to make midnight mushrooms ;" 

the allusion in this passage being to the superstition that 
sheep will not eat the grass that grows on fairy rings. 

Mustard. Tewksbury mustard, to which reference is 
made in " 2 Henry IV." (ii. 4), where Falstafif speaks of " wit 
as thick as Tewksbury mustard," was formerly very famous. 
Shakespeare speaks only of its thickness, but others have 
celebrated its pungency. Coles, writing in 1657, says: "In 
Gloucestershire, about Teuxbury, they grind mustard and 

^ " Illustrations of Shakespeare," p. 386. 

"^ See page 1 5. 

= " Plant- Lore of Shakespeare," p. 131. 



PLANTS. 233 

make it into balls, which are brought to London, and other 
remote places, as being the best that the world affords." 

Narcissus. The old legend attached to this flower is men- 
tioned by Emilia in " The Two Noble Kinsmen" (ii. i): 

" That was a fair boy certain, but a fool. 
To love himself; were there not maids enough ?" 

Nutmeg. A gilt nutmeg was formerly a common gift at 
Christmas and on other festive occasions, a notice of which 
occurs in " Love's Labour's Lost " (v. 2), in the following 
dialogue :' 

" Annado. ' The armipotent Mars, of lances the almighty. 
Gave Hector a gift, — ' 
Dinnain. A gilt nutmeg." 

Oak. A crown of oak was considered by the Romans 
worthy of the highest emulation of statesmen and warriors. 
To him who had saved the life of a Roman soldier was given 
a crown of oak-leaves; one, indeed, which was accounted 
more honorable than any other. In " Coriolanus " (ii. i), 
Volumnia says : " he comes the third time home with the 
oaken garland." And again (i. 3) : " To a cruel war I sent 
him ; from whence he returned, his brows bound with oak." 
Montesquieu, indeed, said that it was with two or three hun- 
dred crowns of oak that Rome conquered the w^orld. Al- 
though so much historical and legendary lore have clustered 
round the oak, yet scarcely any mention is made of this by 
Shakespeare. The legend of Heme the Hunter, which seems 
to have been current at Windsor, is several times alluded to, 
as, for instance, in " Merry Wives of Windsor " (iv. 4) : 

" Mrs. Page. There is an old tale goes, that Heme the hunter, 
Sometime a keeper here in Windsor forest. 
Doth all the winter time, at still midnight, 
Walk round about an oak, with great ragg'd horns. 

Page. . . . there want not many, that do fear 
In deep of night to walk by this Heme's oak." 

Heme's Oak, so long an object of much curiosity and en- 
' Nares's " Glossary," vol. ii. p. 612. 



^34 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



thusiasm, is now no more. According to one theory, the 
old tree was blown down August 31, 1863 ; and a young oak 
was planted by her Majesty, September 12, 1863, to mark 
the spot where Heme's Oak stood.' Mr. Halliwell-Phil- 
lipps, however, tells us, " the general opinion is that it was 
accidentally destroyed in the year 1796, through an order 
of George III. to the bailiff Robinson, that all the unsightly 
trees in the vicinity of the castle should be removed ; an 
opinion confirmed by a well-established fact, that a person 
named Grantham, who contracted with the bailiff for the 
removal of the trees, fell into disgrace with the king for 
having included the oak in his gatherings."" 

Olive. This plant, ever famous from its association with 
the return of the dove to the ark, has been considered typ- 
ical of peace. It was as an emblem of peace that a garland 
of olive was given to Judith when she restored peace to the 
Israelites by the death of Holofernes (Judith, xv. 13). It 
was equally honored by Greeks and Romans. It is, too, in 
this sense that Shakespeare speaks of it when he makes 
Viola, in '^Twelfth Night" (i. 5), say: " I bring no overture 
of war, no taxation of homage ; I hold the olive in my hand, 
my words are as full of peace as matter." In Sonnet CVII. 
occurs the well-known line:' 

" And peace proclaims olives of endless age." 

Pabn. As the symbol of victory, this was carried before 
the conqueror in triumphal processions. Its classical use is 
noticed by Shakespeare in " Coriolanus " (v. 3). Volumnia 
says : * 

" And bear the palm, for having bravely shed 
Thy wife and children's blood." 



' See " Windsor Guide," p. 5. 

" See " Notes and Queries," 3d series, vol. xii. p. 160. 

^ See also " 3 Henry VI.," iv. 6 ; " Timon of Athens," v. 4 ; " Antony 
and Cleopatra," iv. 6 ; " 2 Henry IV.," iv. 4. 

* See " As You Like It," iii. 2 ; " Timon of Athens," v. i ; of. " Henry 
VIII.," iv. 2. 



PLANTS. 235 

In " Julius Caesar " (i. 2), Cassius exclaims : 

" Ye gods, it doth amaze me, 
A man of such a feeble temper should 
So get the start of the majestic world, 
And bear the palm alone." 

Pilgrims were formerly called " palmers," from the staff 
or bough of palm they Avere wont to carry. So, in " All's 
Well That Ends Well " (iii. 5), Helena asks : 

" Where do the palmers lodge, I do beseech you ?" 

Pcai'. In his few notices of the pear Shakespeare only 
mentions two by name, the warden and the poperin ; the 
former was chiefly used for roasting or baking, and is men- 
tioned by the clown in the " Winter's Tale" (iv. 3) : 

" I must have saffron, to colour the warden pies." 

Hence Ben Jonson makes a pun upon Church-warden pics. 
According to some antiquarians, the name warden is from 
the Anglo-Saxon zvcardcn^ to preserve, as it keeps for a long 
time ; but it is more probable that the word had its origin 
from the horticultural .skill of the Cistercian monks of War- 
don Abbey, in Bedfordshire, founded in the 12th century. 
Three warden pears appeared on the armorial bearings of 
the abbey.* It is noticeable that the warden pies of Shake- 
speare's day, colored with saffron, have been replaced by 
stewed pears colored with cochineal. 

The poperin pear was probably introduced from Flanders 
by the antiquary Leland, who was made rector of Poperiiig 
by Henry VIII. It is alluded to by Mercutio in " Romeo 
and Juliet" (ii. i), where he wishes that Romeo were "a 
poperin pear." In the old dramas there is much attempt 
at wit on this pear. 

Peas. A practice called " peascod wooing" was formerly 
a common mode of divination in love affairs. The cook, 
when shelling green peas, would, if she chanced to find a 
pod having nine, lay it on the lintel of the kitchen-door, and 

^ See "Archaeological Journal," vol. v. p. 301. 



236 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



the first man who entered was supposed to be her future 
husband. Another way of divination by peascod consisted 
in the lover selecting one growing on the stem, snatching it 
away quickly, and if the good omen of the peas remaining 
in the husk were preserved, in then presenting it to the lady 
of his choice. Touchstone, in "As You Like It" (ii. 4), 
alludes to this piece of popular suggestion : " I remember 
the wooing of a peascod' instead of her." Gay, who has 
carefully chronicled many a custom of his time, says, in his 
" Fourth Pastoral :" 

" As peascods once I pluck'd, I chanc'd to see, 
One that was closely fiU'd with three times three, 
Which when I cropp'd I safely home convey'd. 
And o'er my door the spell in secret laid." 

We may quote, as a further illustration, the following stanza 
from Browne's " Pastorals " (bk. ii. song 3) : 

" The peascod greene, oft with no little toyle, 
He'd seek for in the fattest, fertil'st soile, 
And rende it from the stalke to bring it to her, 
And in her bosom for acceptance wooe her."* 

Plantain. The leaves of this plant were carefully valued 
by our forefathers for their supposed efficacy in healing 
wounds, etc. It was also considered as a preventive of poi- 
son ; and to this supposed virtue we find an allusion in 
" Romeo and Juliet " (i. 2) : 

" Benvolio. Take thou some new infection to thy eye, 
And the rank poison of the old will die. 

Romeo. Your plantain leaf is excellent for that. 
Be7ivolio. For what, I pray thee .'' 

Romeo. For your broken shin. ''^ 

In the " Two Noble Kinsmen " (i. 2) Palamon says: 

" These poor slight sores 
Need not a plantain." 

' The cod was what we now call the pod. 

"^ See Brand's " Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. ii. p. 99. 

'' See " Love's Labour's Lost," iii. i. 



PLANTS. 237 

Poppy. The plant referred to by Shakespeare in " Othel- 
lo " (iii. 3) is the opium poppy, well known in his day for 
its deadly qualities. It is described by Spenser in the 
"Fairy Queen " (ii. 7, 52) as the " dead -sleeping poppy," 
and Drayton (" Nymphidia," v.) enumerates it among the 
flowers that procure " deadly sleeping." 

Potato. It is curious enough, says Nares," to find that ex- 
cellent root, which now forms a regular portion of the daily 
nutriment of every individual, and is the chief or entire sup- 
port of multitudes in Ireland, spoken of continually as hav- 
ing some powerful effect upon the human frame, in exciting 
the desires and passions ; yet this is the case in all the writ- 
ings contemporary with Shakespeare. Thus Falstaff, in 
" Merry Wives of Windsor " (v. 5), says : " Let the sky rain 
potatoes ; let it thunder to the tune of* Green Sleeves,' hail 
kissing comfits," etc. In " Troilus and Cressida" (v. 2), Ther- 
sites adds : " How the devil luxury, with his fat rump and 
potato finger, tickles these together."" It appears, too, that 
the medical writers of the times countenanced this fancy. 
Mr. Ellacombe' observes that the above passages are of pe- 
culiar interest, inasmuch as they contain almost the earliest 
notice of potatoes after their introduction into England. 

Primrose. Although the early primrose has always been 
such a popular and favorite flower, yet it seems to have been 
associated with sadness,* or even worse than sadness ; for, in 
the following passages, the " primrose paths " and " primrose 
way " are meant to be suggestive of sinful pleasures. Thus, 
in " Hamlet " (i. 3), Ophelia says : 

"like a puff'd and reckless libertine. 
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads, 
And recks not his own rede." 



' " Glossary," vol. ii. p. 677. 

''See Beaumont and Fletcher, "Elder Brother," iv. 4; Massinger, 
" New Way to Pay Old Debts," ii. 2 ; Ben Jonson, " Cynthia's Revels," 
ii. I, etc. 

' "Plant- Lore of Shakespeare," p. 173. 

* Ibid., p. 179. 



238 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

And in "Macbeth" (ii. 3), the Porter declares: "I had 
thought to have let in some of all professions, that go the 
primrose way to the everlasting bonfire." Curious to say, 
too, Shakespeare's only epithets for this fair flower are, 
" pale," " faint," " that die unmarried." Nearly all the poets 
of that time spoke of it in the same strain, with the excep- 
tion of Ben Jonson and the two Fletchers. 

Reed. Among the uses to which the reed was formerly 
applied were the thatching of houses and the making of 
shepherds' pipes. The former is alluded to in the " Tem- 
pest " (v. i) : 

" His tears run down his beard, like winter's drops 
From eaves of reeds ;" 

and the latter in " Merchant of Venice " (iii. 4), where Portia 
speaks of " a reed voice." It has generally been regarded 
as the emblem of weakness, as in " Antony and Cleopatra " 
(ii. 7): "a reed that will do me no service." 

Rose. As might be expected, the rose is the flower most 
frequently mentioned by Shakespeare, a symbol, in many 
cases, of all that is fair and lovely. Thus, for instance, in 
" Hamlet " (iii. 4), Hamlet says : 

" Such an act . . . takes off the rose 
From the fair forehead of an innocent love, 
And sets a blister there." 

And Ophelia (iii. i) describes Hamlet as, 

" The expectancy and rose of the fair state." 

In days gone by the rose entered largely into the customs 
and superstitions of most nations, and even nowadays there 
is an extensive folk-lore associated with it. 

It appears that, in Shakespeare's time, one of the fashions 
of the day was the wearing of enormous roses on the shoes, of 
which full-length portraits afford striking examples.' Ham- 
let (iii. 2) speaks of "two Provincial roses on my razed shoes ;" 
meaning, no doubt, rosettes of ribbon in the shape of roses 
of Provins or Provence. Douce favors the former, Warton 

1 Singer's " Shakespeare," 1875, vol. ix. p. 227. 



PLANTS. 239 

the latter locality. In either case, it was a large rose. The 
Provence, or damask rose, was probably the better known. 
Gerarde, in his " Herbal," says that the damask rose is called 
by some Rosa Provincialise Mr. Fairholt^ quotes, from 
"Friar Bacon's Prophecy" (1604), the following, in allusion 
to this fashion : 

" When roses in the gardens grew, 
And not in ribbons on a shoe : 
Now ribbon roses take such place 
That garden roses want their grace." 

Again, in " King John " (i. i), where the Bastard alludes 
to the three-farthing silver pieces of Queen Elizabeth, which 
were extremely thin, and had the profile of the sovereign, 
with a rose on the back of her head, there doubtless is a fuller 
reference to the court fashion of sticking roses in the ear:^ 

" my face so thin, 
That in mine ear I durst not stick a rose, 
Lest men should say, ' Look, where three-farthings goes.' " 

Shakespeare also mentions the use of the rose in rose- 
cakes and rose-water, the former in "Romeo and Juliet" 
(v. i), where Romeo speaks of " old cakes of roses," the lat- 
ter in " Taming of the Shrew " (Induction, i) : 

" Let one attend him with a silver basin 
Full of rose-water and bestrew 'd with flowers." 

Referring to its historical lore, we may mention its famous 
connection with the Wars of the Roses. In the fatal dis- 
pute in the Temple Gardens, Somerset, on the part of Lan- 
caster, says (" I Henry VI." ii. 4): 

" Let him that is no coward, nor no flatterer. 
But dare maintain the party of the truth, 
Pluck a red rose from off this thorn with me." 

' " Notes to Hamlet," Clark and Wright, 1876, p. 179. 

" " Costume in England,'' p. 238. At p. 579 the author gives several 
instances of the extravagances to which this fashion led. 

' Some gallants had their ears bored, and wore their mistresses' 
silken shoe-strings in them. See Singer's " Notes," vol. iv. p. 257. 



240 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



Warwick, on the part of York, replies : 

" I love no colours, and, without all colour 
Of base insinuating flattery, 
I pluck this white rose with Plantagenet." 

The trailing white dog-rose is commonly considered to 
have been the one chosen by the House of York. A writer, 
however, in the Quarterly Revieiu (voL cxiv. ) has shown 
that the white rose has a very ancient interest for Enghsh- 
men, as, long before the brawl in the Temple Gardens, the 
flower had been connected with one of the most ancient 
names of our island. The elder Pliny, in discussing the ety- 
mology of the word Albion, suggests that the land may have 
been so named from the white roses which abounded in it. 
The York and Lancaster rose, with its pale striped flowers, 
is a variety of the French rose known as Rosa Gallica. It 
became famous when the two emblematical roses, in the 
persons of Henry VH. and Elizabeth of York, at last brought 
peace and happiness to the country which had been so long 
divided by internal warfare. The canker-rose referred to by 
Shakespeare is the wild dog-rose, a name occasionally ap- 
plied to the common red poppy. 

Rosemary. This plant was formerly in very high esteem, 
and was devoted to various uses. It was supposed to 
strengthen the memory ; hence it was regarded as a symbol 
of remembrance, and on this account was often given to 
friends. Thus, in " Hamlet" (iv. 5), where Ophelia seems 
to be addressing Laertes, she says : " There's rosemary, that's 
for remembrance." In the " Winter's Tale " (iv. 4) rosemary 
and rue are beautifully put together: 

" For you there's rosemary and rue ; these keep 
Seeming and savour all the winter long : 
Grace and remembrance be to you both, 
And welcome to our shearing !" 

Besides being used at weddings, it was also in request at 
funerals, probably for its odor, and as a token of remem- 
brance of the deceased. Thus the Friar, in " Romeo and 
Juliet " (iv. 5), says : 



PLANTS. 

" Dry up your tears, and stick your rosemary 
On this fair corse." 



241 



This practice is thus touchingly alluded to by Gay, in his 
" Pastorals:" 

" To shew their love, the neighbours far and near 
Followed, with wistful look, the damsel's bier: 
Sprigg'd rosemary the lads and lasses bore. 
While dismally the parson walk'd before." 

Rosemary, too, was one of the evergreens with which dishes 
were anciently garnished during the season of Christmas, an 
allusion to which occurs in " Pericles " (iv. 6) : " Marry, come 
up, my dish of chastity with rosemary and bays." 

RiisJi. Before the introduction of carpets, the floors of 
churches and houses were strewed with rushes, a custom to 
which Shakespeare makes several allusions. In '' Taming 
of the Shrew" (iv, i), Grumio asks: " Is supper ready, the 
house trimmed, rushes strewed, cobwebs swept?" and Glen- 
dower, in " I Henry IV."- (iii. i), says : 

" She bids you on the wanton rushes lay you down. 
And rest your gentle head upon her lap." 

At the coronation of Henry V. (" 2 Henry IV.," v. 5), when 
the procession is coming, the grooms cry, "More rushes! 
more rushes !" which seems to have been the usual cry for 
rushes to be scattered on a pavement or a platform when a 
procession was approaching.' Again, in " Richard II." (i. 3), 
the custom is further alluded to by John of Gaunt, who speaks 
of " the presence strew'd," referring to the presence-cham- 
ber. So, too, in " Cymbeline" (ii. 2), lachimo soliloquizes: 

"Tarquin thus 
Did softly press the rushes, ere he waken'd 
The chastity he wounded." 

And in " Romeo and Juliet " (i. 4), Romeo says: 

" Let wantons, light of heart, 
Tickle the senseless rushes with their heels ;" 

' Dyce's " Glossary," p. 373. 
16 



H2 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



an expression which Middleton has borrowed in his " Blunt 
Master Constable," 1602 : 

'• Bid him, whose heart no sorrow feels. 
Tickle the rushes with his wanton heels, 
I have too much lead at mine." 

In the " Two Noble Kinsmen " (ii. i) the Gaoler's Daughter 
is represented carrying "strewings" for the two prisoners' 
chamber. 

Rush-bearings were a sort of rural festival, when the pa- 
rishioners brought rushes to strew the church.' 

The "■ rush-ring " appears to have been a kind of token for 
plighting of troth among rustic lovers. It was afterwards 
vilely used, however, for mock-marriages, as appears from 
one of the Constitutions of Salisbury. In " All's Well that 
Ends Well " (ii. 2) there seems a covert allusion to the rush- 
ring: "As Tib's rush for Tom's fore-finger." Spenser, in 
the " Shepherd's Kalendar," speaks of 

" The knotted rush-rings and gilt Rosemarie." 

Du Breul, in his " Antiquities of Paris," ^ mentions the rush- 
ring as " a kind of espousal used in France by such persons 
as meant to live together in a state of concubinage; but in 
England it was scarcely ever practised except by designing 
men, for the purpose of corrupting those young women to 
whom they pretended love." 

The " rush candle," which, in times past, was found in 
nearly every house, and served as a night-light for the rich 
and candle for the poor, is mentioned in " Taming of the 
Shrew " (iv. 5) : 

" be it moon, or sun, or what you please : 
An if you please to call it a rush candle, 
Henceforth, I vow, it shall be so for me." 

Saffron. In the following passage ("All's Well that Ends 

^ See Brand's "Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. ii- PP- ^3' H- 
" Douce's " Illustrations of Shakespeare," 1839, p. 194. 



PLANTS. 



243 



Well," iv. 5) there seems to be an allusion' by Lafeu to the 
fashionable and fantastic custom of wearing yellow, and to 
that of coloring paste with saffron : " No, no, no, your son 
was misled with a snipt-taffeta fellow there, whose villanous 
saffron would have made all the unbaked and doughy youth 
of a nation in his colour." 

Spcar-g}-ass. This plant — perhaps the common reed — is 
noticed in " i Henry IV." (ii. 4) as used for tickling the nose 
and making it bleed. In Lupton's " Notable Things" it is 
mentioned as part of a medical recipe : " Whoev'er is tor- 
mented with sciatica or the hip-gout, let them take an herb 
called spear-grass, and stamp it, and lay a little thereof upon 
the grief." Mr. Ellacombe" thinks that the plant alluded to 
is the common couch-grass {Triticuin rcpois), which is still 
known in the eastern counties as spear-grass. 

Stover. This word, which is often found in the writings 
of Shakespeare's day, denotes fodder and provision of all 
sorts for cattle. In Cambridgeshire stover signifies hay 
made of coarse, rank grass, such as even cows will not eat 
while it is green. In " The Tempest " (iv. i). Iris says: 

" Thy turfy mountains, where live nibbling sheep, 
And flat meads thatch'd with stover, them to keep." 

According to Steevens, stover was used as a thatch for cart- 
lodges and other buildings that required but cheap cover- 
ings. 

Strawberry. Shakespeare's mention of the strawberry in 
connection with the nettle, in " Henry V." (i. i), 

" The strawberry grows underneath the nettle, 
And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best 
Neighbour'd by fruit of baser quality," 

deserves, says Mr. Ellacombe. a passing note. " It was the 
common opinion in his day that plants were affected by the 
neighborhood of other plants to such an extent that they 
imbibed each others virtues and faults. Thus sweet flowers 

' Dyce's "Glossary," p. 381. 

"^ " Plant- Lore of Shakespeare," p. 319. 



244 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 




were planted near fruit-trees with the idea of improving the 
flavor of the fruit, and evil-smehing trees, Hke the elder, 
were carefully cleared away from fruit-trees, lest they should 
be tainted. But the strawberry was supposed to be an ex- 
ception to the rule, and was said to thrive in the midst of 
* evil communications, without being corrupted.' " 

Thorns. The popular tradition, which represents the 
marks on the moon' to be that of a man carrying a thorn- 
bush on his head, is alluded to in " Midsummer-Night's 
Dream " v. i), in the Prologue : 

" This man, with lanthorn, dog, and bush of thorn, 
Presenteth Moonshine." 

Little else is mentioned by Shakespeare with regard to 
thorns, save that they are generally used by him as the 
emblems of desolation and trouble. 

Violets. An old superstition is alluded to by Shakespeare 
when he makes Laertes wish that violets may spring from 
the grave of Ophelia (" Hamlet," v. i) : 

" Lay her i' the earth : 
And from her fair and unpolluted flesh 
May violets spring !" 

an idea which occurs in Persius's " Satires " (i. 39) : 

" E tumulo fortunataque favilla 
Nascentur violae." 

The violet has generally been associated with early death. 
This, Mr. Ellacombe considers,^ " may have arisen from a 
sort of pity for flowers that were only allowed to see the 
opening year, and were cut off before the first beauty of 
summer had come, and so were looked upon as apt emblems 
of those who enjoyed the bright springtide of life, and no 
more." Thus, the violet is one of the flowers which Marina 
carries to hang " as a carpet on the grave " in " Pericles " 

(iv>0 : 

' See p. 68. 

' " Plant-Lore of Shakespeare," p. 248. 



PLANTS. 245 

" the yellows, blues, 
The purple violets, and marigolds, 
Shall, as a carpet, hang upon thy grave, 
While summer days do last." 

Again, in that exquisite passage in the " Winter's Tale " 
(iv. 4), where Perdita enumerates the flowers of spring, she 
speaks of, 

"violets, dim, 
But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes, 
Or Cytherea's breath ;" 

upon which Mr. Singer' thus comments : " The eyes of Juno 
were as remarkable as those of Pallas, and 

' Of a beauty never yet 
Equalled in height of tincture.' " 

The beauties of Greece and other Asiatic nations tinged 
their eyes of an obscure violet color, by means of some un- 
guent, which was doubtless perfumed, like those for the hair, 
etc., mentioned by Athena^us. 

Willoti'. From time immemorial the willow has been re- 
garded as the symbol of sadness. Hence it was customary 
for those who were forsaken in love to wear willow garlands, 
a practice to which Shakespeare makes several allusions. In 
" Othello " (iv. 3), Desdemona, anticipating her death, says : 

" My mother had a maid call'd Barbara ; 
She was in love ; and he she lov'd prov'd mad, 
And did forsake her : she had a song of — Willow ; 
An old thing 'twas, but it express'd her fortune, 
And she died singing it : that song, to-night, 
Will not go from my mind." 

The following is the song : ^ 

' " Shakespeare," vol. iv. p. y6. 

"^ "The old ballad on which Shakespeare formed this song is given 
in Percy's ' Reliques of Ancient Poetry' (1794, vol. i. p. 208), from a 
copy in the Pepysian collection. A different version of it may be seen 
in Chappcll's ' Popular Music of the Olden Time' (2d edition, vol. i. 
p. 207). The original ditty is the lamentation of a lover for the incon- 
stancy of his mistress." — Dyce's " Shakespeare," vol. vii. p. 450. 



246 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

"The poor soul sat sighing by a sycamore tree, 

Sing all a green willow ; 
Her hand on her bosom, her head on her knee, 

Sing willow, willow, willow : 
The fresh streams ran by her, and murmur'd her moans. 

Sing willow, willow, willow ; 
Her salt tears fell from her, and soften 'd the stones. 

Sing willow, willow, willow : 
Sing all a green willow must be my garland." 

And further on Emilia says (v. 2) : 

" I will play the swan. 
And die in music. — [S/;2£-mg-] ' Willow, willow, willow.'" 

And, again, Lorenzo, in " Merchant of Venice " (v. 1), nar- 
rates : 

" In such a night 

Stood Dido, with a willow in her hand. 

Upon the wild sea-banks." 

It was, too, in reference to this custom that Shakespeare, 
in " Hamlet " (iv. 7), represented poor Opheha hanging her 
flowers on the "willow aslant a brook." "This tree," says 
Douce,' " might have been chosen as the symbol of sadness 
from the cxxxvii. Psalm (verse 2) : ' We hanged our harps 
upon the willows ;' or else from a coincidence between the 
zuffJ?ing-\\'i\\ow and falling tears." Another reason has been 
assigned. The Agiuis castas was supposed to promote chas- 
tity, and " the willow being of a much like nature," says 
Swan, in his " Speculum Mundi " (1635), " it is yet a custom 
that he which is deprived of his love must wear a willow 
garland." Bona, the sister of the King of France, on receiv- 
ing news of Edward the Fourth's marriage with Elizabeth 
Grey, exclaimed, 

" in hope he'll prove a widower shortly, 
I'll wear the willow garland for his sake." 

Woriiiivood. The use of this plant in weaning infants is 
alluded to in "Romeo and Juliet" (i. 3), by Juliet's nurse, 
in the following passage : 

' Illustrations of Shakespeare," p. 105. 



PLANTS. 247 

" For I had then laid wormwood to my dug, 
* * * * if 

When it did taste the wormwood on the nipple 
Of my dug, and felt it bitter, pretty fool." 

Veto. This tree, styled by Shakespeare " the dismal yew " 
(Titus Andronicus," ii. 3), apart from the many supersti- 
tions associated with it, has been very frequently planted 
in churchyards, besides being used at funerals. Paris, in 
" Romeo and Juliet " (v. 3), says : 

" Under yond yew-trees lay thee all along. 
Holding thine ear close to the hollow ground ; 
So shall no foot upon the churchyard tread. 
Being loose, unfirm, with digging up of graves, 
But thou shalt hear it." 

Although various reasons have been assigned for planting 
the yew-tree in churchyards, it seems probable that the prac- 
tice had a superstitious origin. As witches were supposed 
to exercise a powerful influence over the winds, they were 
believed occasionally to exert their formidable power against 
religious edifices. Thus Macbeth says (iv. i) : 

" Though you untie the winds, and let them fight 
Against the churches." 

To counteract, therefore, this imaginary danger, our ances- 
tors may have planted the yew-tree in their churchyards, 
not only on account of its vitality as an evergreen, but as 
connected in some way, in heathen times, with the influence 
of evil powers.' In a statute made in the latter part of Ed- 
ward I.'s reign, to prevent rectors from cutting down trees 
in churchyards, we find the following : " Verum arborcs ip- 
sae, propter ventorum impetus ne ecclesiis noceant, soepe plan- 
tantur."' 

The custom of sticking yew in the shroud is alluded to in 
the following song in " Twelfth Night " (ii. 4) : 

* Deuce's " Illustrations of Shakespeare," p. 244. 

" See Brand's " Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. ii. pp. 255-266. 



248 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

" My shroud of white, stuck all with yew, 
O, prepare it ! 
My part of death, no one so true 
Did share it." 

Through being reckoned poisonous, it is introduced in " Mac- 
beth " (iv. i) in connection with the witches: 

" Gall of goat, and slips of yew, 
Sliver'd in the moon's eclipse." 

" How much the spHtting or tearing off of the sHp had 
to do with magic we learn from a piece of Slavonic folk- 
lore. It is unlucky to use for a beam a branch or a tree 
broken by the wind. The devil, or storm-spirit, claims it as 
his own, and, were it used, the evil spirit would haunt the 
house. It is a broken branch the witches choose ; a sliver'd 
slip the woodman will have none of.'" 

Its epithet, " double-fatal " (" Richard II.," iii. 2), no doubt 
refers to the poisonous quality of the leaves, and on account 
of its wood being employed for instruments of death. Sir 
Stephen Scroop, when telling Richard of Bolingbroke's re- 
volt, declares that 

" Thy very beadsmen learn' to bend their bows 
Of double-fatal yew against thy state." 

It has been suggested that the poison intended by the 
Ghost in " Hamlet " (i. 5), when he speaks of the "juice of 
cursed hebenon," is that of the yew, and is the same as Mar- 
lowe's "juice of hebon " (''Jew of Malta," iii. 4). The yew 
is called hebon by Spenser and by other writers of Shake- 
speare's age ; and, in its various forms of eben, eiben, hiben, 
etc., this tree is so named in no less than five different Euro- 
pean languages. From medical authorities, both of ancient 
and modern times, it would seem that the juice of the yew 
is a rapidly fatal poison ; next, that the symptoms attend- 
ant upon yew-poisoning correspond, in a very remarkable 
manner, with those which follow the bites of poisonous 
snakes ; and, lastly, that no other poison but the yew pro- 

1 " Notes and Queries," 5th series, vol. xii. p. 468. 



PLANTS. 249 

duces the " lazar-like " ulcerations on the body upon which 
Shakespeare, in this passage, lays so much stress.' 

Among the other explanations of this passage is the well- 
known one which identifies " hcbenon " with henbane. Mr. 
Beisly suggests that nightshade may be meant, while Nares 
considers that ebony is meant.'' 

From certain ancient statutes it appears that every Eng- 
lishman, while archery was practised, was obliged to keep 
in his house either a bow of yew or some other wood.' 

' Extract of a paper read by Rev. W. A. Harrison, New Shakespeare 
Society, 12th May, 1882. 

^ See Douce's " Illustrations of Shakespeare ;" Nares's " Glossary," 
vol. i. p. 412 ; Beisly's " Shakespeare's Garden," p. 4. 

^ Singer's " Shakespeare," vol. iv. p. 427. See a paper in the " Anti- 
quary" (1882, vol. vi. p. 13), by Mr. George Black, on the yew in Shake- 
spearian folk-lore. 



CHAPTER IX. 

INSECTS AND REPTILES. 

As Dr. Johnson has truly remarked, Shakespeare is " the 
poet of nature," for "his attention was not confined to the 
actions of men; he was an exact surveyor of the inanimate 
world ; his descriptions have always some peculiarity, gath- 
ered by contemplating things as they really exist. Whether 
life or nature be his subject, Shakespeare shows plainly that 
he has seen with his own eyes." So, too, he was in the 
habit of taking minute observation of the popular notions 
relating to natural history, so many of which he has intro- 
duced into his plays, using them to no small advantage. In 
numerous cases, also, the peculiarities of certain natural ob- 
jects have furnished the poet with many excellent meta- 
phors. Thus, in " Richard II." (ii. 3), Bolingbroke speaks 
of " the caterpillars of the commonwealth ;" and in "2 Hen- 
ry VI." (iii. i) the Duke of York's reflection on the destruc- 
tion of his hopes is, 

" Thus are my blossoms blasted in the bud, 
And caterpillars eat my leaves away;' 

their destructive powers being familiar. 

AnL An ancient name for the ant is " pismire," proba- 
bly a Danish word, from paid and inyre, signifying such ants 
as live in hillocks. In " i Henry IV." (i. 3) Hotspur says: 

" Why, look you, I am whipp'd and scourg'd with rods, 
Nettled, and stung with pismires, when I hear 
Of this vile politician, Bolingbroke." 

Bluc-bottlc. This well-known insect has often been used 
as a term of reproach. Thus, in " 2 Henry IV." (v. 4), it 
furnishes an epithet applied by the abusive tongue of Doll 
Tearsheet to the beadle who had her in custody. She re- 



INSECTS AND REPTILES. 25 I 

viles him as a " blue-bottle rogue," a term, says Mr. Patter- 
son,' " evidently suggested by the similarity of the colors 
of his costume to that of the insect." 

Bots. Our ancestors imagined that poverty or improper 
food engendered these worms, or that they were the off- 
spring of putrefaction. In " i Henry IV." (ii. i), one of 
the carriers says : " Peas and beans are as dank here as a 
dog, and that is the next way to give poor jades the bots." 
And one of the misfortunes of the miserable nag of Petru- 
chio (" Taming of the Shrew," iii. 2), is that he is so " be- 
gnawn with the bots." 

Cricket. The presence of crickets in a house has gener- 
ally been regarded as a good omen, and said to prognosti- 
cate cheerfulness and plenty. Thus, Poins, in answer to 
the Prince's question in " i Henry IV." (ii. 4), " Shall we be 
merry?" replies, ''As merry as crickets." By many of our 
poets the cricket has been connected with cheerfulness and 
mirth. Thus, in Milton, " II Penseroso " desires to be 

" Far from all resort of mirth, 
Save the cricket on the hearth." 

It has not always, however, been regarded in the same 
light, for Ga}% in his " Pastoral Dirge," among the rural 
prognostications of death, gives the following: 

"And shrilling crickets in the chimney cr^''d." 

And in Dryden's "CEdipus" occurs the subjoined: 

" Owls, ravens, crickets, seem the watch of death." 

Lady Macbeth, also (" Macbeth," ii. 2), in replying to the 
question of her husband after the murder of Duncan, says : 

" I heard the owl scream, and the crickets cry." 

In " Cymbeline " (ii. 2), also, when lachimo, at midnight, 
commences his survey of the chamber where Imogen lies 
sleeping, his first words refer to the chirping of crickets, 

* " Insects Mentioned by Shakespeare," 1841, p. 181. 



252 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



rendered all the more audible by the repose which at that 
moment prevailed throughout the palace : 

" The crickets sing, and man's o'er-labour'd sense 
Repairs itself by rest." 

Gilbert White, in his" History of Selborne" (1853, p. 174), 
remarks that "it is the housewife's barometer, foretelling 
her when it will rain ; and is prognostic, sometimes, she 
thinks, of ill or good luck, of the death of a near relation, or 
the approach of an absent lover. By being the constant 
companion of her solitary home, it naturally becomes the 
object of her superstition." ' 

Its supposed keen sense of hearing is referred to in the 
"Winter's Tale" (ii. i) by Mamillius, who, on being asked 
by Hermione to tell a tale, replies: 

" I will tell it softly ; 
Yond crickets shall not hear it." 

Frog. In the "Two Noble Kinsmen " (iii. 4), the Gaoler's 
Daughter says : 

" Would I could find a fine frog ! he would tell me 
News from all parts o' the world ; then would I make 
A carack of a cockle-shell, and sail 
By east and north-east to the King of Pigmies, 
For he tells fortunes rarely." 

In days gone by frogs were extensively used for the pur- 
pose of divination. 

Gad-fly. A common name for this fly is the " brize " or 
" breese,'"^ an allusion to which occurs in " Troilus and Cres- 
sida" (i. 3), where Nestor, speaking of the sufferings which 
cattle endure from this insect, says : 

" The herd hath more annoyance by the breese 
Than by the tiger." 

And in "Antony and Cleopatra" (iii. 10) Shakespeare 

' See Brand's " Pop. Antiq.,'' 1849, vol. iii. pp. 190, 191. 
" See Patterson's " Insects Mentioned by Shakespeare," 1841, pp. 
104, 105. 



INSECTS AND REPTILES. 



253 



makes the excited Scarus draw a comparison between the 
effect which this insect produces on a herd of cattle and the 
abruptness and sudden frenzy of Cleopatra's retreat from the 
naval conflict : 

" Yon ribaudred nag of Eg>'pt, 
Whom leprosy o'ertake ! i' the midst o' the fight, 
When vantage like a pair of twins appear'd, 
Both as the same, or rather ours the elder, — 
The breese upon her, like a cow in June, — 
Hoists sails, and flies." 

It is said that the terror this insect causes in cattle pro- 
ceeds solely from the alarm occasioned by " a peculiar sound 
it emits while hovering for the purpose of oviposition.'" 

Lady-bird. This is used in " Romeo and Juliet" (i. 3) as 
a term of endearment. Lady Capulet having inquired after 
her daughter Juliet, the Nurse replies: 

" I bade her come. What, lamb ! W^hat, lady-bird ! 
God forbid ! Where's this girl } What, Juliet !" 

Mr. Staunton regards this passage as an exquisite touch of 
nature. " The old nurse," he says, " in her fond garrulity, 
uses ' lady-bird ' as a term of endearment ; but, recollecting 
its application to a female of loose manners, checks herself — 
' God forbid !' her darling should prove such a one." Mr. 
Dyce," however, considers this explanation incorrect, and 
gives the subjoined note : " The nurse says that she has 
already bid Juliet come; she then calls out, 'What, lamb! 
What, lady-bird !' and Juliet not yet making her appear- 
ance, she exclaims, ' God forbid ! Where's this girl ?' The 
words ' God forbid ' being properly an ellipsis of ' God forbid 
that any accident should keep her away,' but used here 
merely as an expression of impatience." 

Liaard. It was a common superstition in the time of 
Shakespeare that lizards were venomous, a notion which 
probably originated in their singular form. Hence the liz- 

' " Linnaean Transactions," vol. xv. p. 407 ; cf. Virgil's *' Georgics," iii. 
1. 148. 
" "Glossar)'," 1876, p. 238. 



254 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



ard's leg was thought a suitable ingredient for the witches' 
caldron in "Macbeth" (iv. i). Suffolk, in "2 Henry VI." 
(iii. 2), refers to this idea: 

" Their chiefest prospect murdering basilisks ! 
Their softest touch as smart as Hzards' stings. 

Again, in " 3 Henry VI." (ii. 2), Queen Margaret speaks of 

"venom toads, or lizards' dreadful stings." 

In " Troilus and Cressida " (v. i) it is classed with the toad 
and owl. 

Moth. This term, as Mr, Patterson remarks in his " In- 
sects Mentioned by Shakespeare" (1841, p. 164), does not 
awaken many pleasing associations. In the minds of most 
people it stands for an insect either contemptible from its 
size and inertness, or positively obnoxious from its attacks 
on many articles of clothing. Thus Shakespeare, he says, 
employs the expression " moth " to denote something trifling 
or extremely minute. And in " King John " (iv. i) we have 
the touching appeal of Prince Arthur to Hubert, in whicli, 
for mote, he would substitute moth : 

" Arthur. Is there no remedy ? 

Hubert. None, but to lose your eyes. 

Arthur. O heaven ! — that there were but a mote in yours, 
A grain, a dust, a gnat, a wandering hair, 
Any annoyance in that precious sense ! 
Then, feeling what small things are boisterous there, 
Your vile intent must needs seem horrible." 

See also " Henry V." (iv. i). In these two passages, how- 
ever, the correct reading is probably "mote."' 

Serpent. A term used by our old writers to signify a ser- 
pent was "a worm," which is still found in the north of 
England in the same sense. It is used several times by 
Shakespeare ; as, for instance, in " Measure for Measure " 
(iii. i), where the Duke, addressing Claudio, says : 

' Nares's " Glossary," vol. ii. p. 973, 



, INSECTS AND REPTILES. 255 

" Thou'rt by no means valiant ; 
For thou dost fear the soft and tender fork 
Of a poor worm." 

This passage also illustrates an error very prevalent in days 
gone by, that the forked tongue of the serpent tribe was 
their instrument of offence, without any thought of the 
teeth or fangs, which are its real weapons.' Again, the 
" blind-worm " or " slow-worm " — a little snake with very 
small eyes, falsely supposed to be venomous — is spoken of 
in "A Midsummer- Night's Dream" (ii. 2), in that charm- 
ing passage where the fairies are represented as singing to 
their queen, Titania : 

" You spotted snakes, with double tongue, 
Thorny hedgehogs, be not seen ; 
Newts, and bhnd-worms, do no wrong, 
Come not near our fairy queen." 

In "Macbeth" (iv. i), among the ingredients of the 
witches' caldron are 

" Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting." 

To quote a further allusion, Shakespeare, in "Timon of 
Athens" (iv. 3), speaks of 

" The gilded newt and eyeless venom'd worm." 

Massinger employs the same term in his " Parliament of 

Love " (iv. 2) : 

" The sad father 
That sees his son stung by a snake to death, 
May, with more justice, stay his vengeful hand, 
And let the worm escape, than you vouchsafe him 
A minute to repent."^ 

There was an old notion that the serpent caused deatli 



' Cf. " Macbeth " (iii. 4) : 

" There the grown serpent lies : the worm, that's fled, 
Hath nature that in time will venom breed." 
* Worm is used for serpent or viper, in the Geneva version of the 
New Testament, in Acts xxvii. 4, 5. 



256 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

without pain, a popular fancy which Shakespeare has intro- 
duced in his " Antony and Cleopatra " (v. 2) : 

" Hast thou the pretty worm of Nilus there, 
That kills and pains not ?" 

The term " worm " was also occasionally used to signify a 
" poor creature," as also was the word " snake." Thus, in 
the " Taming of the Shrew " (v. 2), Katharina says : 

" Come, come, you froward and unable worms ! 
My mind hath been as big as one of yours. 
My heart as great, my reason, haply, more." 

So, in " As You Like It " (iv. 3), Rosalind uses " snake " in 

the sense of reproach : " Well, go your way to her, for I see 

love hath made thee a tame snake." 

The serpent, as the emblem of ingratitude, is alluded to 

by King Lear (ii. 4), who, referring to his daughter, says 

how she 

" struck me with her tongue, 
Most serpent-like, upon the very heart : — 
All the stor'd vengeances of heaven fall 
On her ingrateful top !" 

According to a popular belief, still credited, a poisonous 
bite could be cured by the blood of the viper which darted 
the poison. Thus, in " Richard IL" (i. i), Mowbray says: 

" I am disgrac'd, impeach'd, and baffled here, 
Pierc'd to the soul with slander's venom'd spear, 
The which no balm can cure, but his heart-blood 
Which breath'd this poison." 

In Cornwall it is still believed that the dead body of a 
serpent, bruised on the wound it has occasioned, is an infal- 
lible remedy for its bite.' Hence has originated the follow- 
ing rhyme : 

" The beauteous adder hath a sting. 
Yet bears a balsam too." 

' See Hunt's "Popular Romances of the West of England," 1871, 
p. 41 5 ; and Brand's " Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. iii, p. 270, 



INSECTS AND REPTILES. 257 

The old notion that the snake, in casting off its slough, 
or skin, annually, is supposed to regain new vigor and 
fresh youth, is alluded to by King Henry (" Henry V.," 
iv. i), who speaks of " casted slough and fresh legerity" — 
legerity meaning lightness, nimbleness. In "Twelfth Night" 
(ii. 5), in the letter which Malvolio finds, there is this pas- 
sage : " to inure thyself to what thou art like to be, cast thy 
humble slough and appear fresh." One of the most useful 
miracles which St. Patrick is reported to have performed 
was his driving the venomous reptiles out of Ireland, and 
forbidding them to return. This tradition is probably alluded 
to by King Richard (" Richard II.," ii. i): 

" Now for our Irish wars : 
We must supplant those rough rug-headed kerns. 
Which Hve like venom, where no venom else, 
But only they, hath privilege to live." 

The way, we are told, by which the saint performed this 
astounding feat of his supernatural power was by means of 
a drum. Even spiders, too, runs the legend, were included 
in this summary process of excommunicating the serpent 
race. One of the customs, therefore, observed on St. Pat- 
rick's day, is visiting Croagh Patrick. This sacred hill is sit- 
uated in the county of Mayo, and is said to have been the 
spot chosen by St. Patrick for banishing the serpents and 
other noxious animals into the sea. 

In " Julius Caisar " (ii. i), where Brutus says, 

" It is the bright day that brings forth the adder; 
And that craves wary walking," 

we may compare the popular adage, 

" March wind 
Wakes the ether (/. c, adder) and blooms the whin." ' 

Spider. This little creature, which, in daily life, is seldom 
noticed except for its cobweb, the presence of which in a 
house generally betokens neglect, has, however, an interest- 

' Denham's "Weather Proverbs," 1842. 
17 



258 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

ing history, being the subject of many a curious legend and 
quaint superstition. Thus, it has not escaped the all-per- 
vading eye of Shakespeare, who has given us many curious 
scraps of folk-lore concerning it. In days gone by the web 
of the common house-spider was much in request for stop- 
ping the effusion of blood ; and hence Bottom, in address- 
ing one of his fairy attendants in "A Midsummer-Night's 
Dream " (iii. i), says : " I shall desire you of more acquaint- 
ance, good Master Cobweb : if I cut my finger, I shall make 
bold with you." 

Its medicinal virtues, however, do not end here, for, in 
Sussex' it is used in cases of jaundice, many an old doc- 
tress prescribing " a live spider rolled up in butter." It is 
stated, too, that the web is narcotic, and has been adminis- 
tered internally in certain cases of fever, with success.^ As 
a remedy for ague it has been considered most efficacious. 
Some years ago a lady in the south of Ireland was cele- 
brated far and near for her cure of this disorder. Her rem- 
edy was a large house-spider taken alive, enveloped in trea- 
cle or preserve. Of course, the parties were carefully kept 
in ignorance of what the wonderful remedy was." 

According to a universal belief, spiders were formerly 
considered highly venomous, in allusion to which notion 
King Richard II. (iii. 2), in saluting the "dear earth" on 
which he stands, after " late tossing on the breaking seas," 
accosts it thus : 

" Feed not thy sovereign's foe, my gentle earth. 
Nor with thy sweets comfort his ravenous sense ; 
But let thy spiders, that suck up thy venom, 
And heavy-gaited toads, lie in their way, 
Doing annoyance to the treacherous feet, 
Which with usurping steps do trample thee." 

Again, Leontes, in the " Winter's Tale " (ii. i), remarks : 

" There may be in the cup 
A spider steep'd." 

' " Folk-Lore Record," 1878, vol. i. p. 45. 

^ See Brand's " Pop. Antiq.," vol. iii. pp. 223, 287, 381. 

' See article on "Spider-Lore," in Graphic, November 13, 1880. 



INSECTS AND REPTILES. 259 

In " Cymbeline " (iv. 2) and "Richard III." (i. 2) Shake- 
speare classes it with adders and toads ; and in the latter 
play (i. 3), when Queen Margaret is hurling imprecations on 
her enemies, she is turned from her encounter with Gloster 
by a remark made by Queen Elizabeth ; and while a pitying 
spirit seems for a minute to supplant her rage, she addresses 
her successor in these words : 

" Poor painted queen, vain flourish of my fortune ! 
Why strew'st thou sugar on that bottled spider, 
Whose deadly web ensnareth thee about ?" 

In another part of the same play (iv. 4) the epithet " bot- 
tled " is again applied in a similar manner by Queen Eliza- 
beth : 

" That bottled spider, that foul bunch-back'd toad !" 

Ritson, on these two passages, has the following remarks on 
the term, bottled spider: "A large, bloated, glossy spider, 
supposed to contain venom proportionate to its size." 

The origin of the silvery threads of gossamer which are 
so frequently seen extending from bush to bush was for- 
merly unknown. Spenser, for instance, speaks of them as 
" scorched dew ;" and Thomson, in his " Autumn," mentions 
" the filmy threads of dew evaporate ;" which probably, says 
Mr. Patterson,' refers to the same object. The gossamer is 
now, however, known to be the production of a minute spi- 
der. It is twice mentioned by Shakespeare, but not in con- 
nection with the little being from which it originates. One 
of the passages is in " Romeo and Juliet " (ii. 6) : 

" A lover may bestride the gossamer 
That idles in the wanton summer air, 
And yet not fall ; so light is vanity.*' 

The other occurs in " King Lear " (iv. 6), where Edgar ac- 
costs his father, after his supposed leap from that 

"cliff, whose high and bending head 
Looks fearfully in the confined deep." 



' " Insects Mentioned by Shakespeare,'' 1841, p. 220. 



26o FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

He says : 

" Hadst thou been aught but gossamer, feathers, air. 
So many fathom down precipitating, 
Thou'dst shiver'd like an egg." 

In each case it is expressive of extreme lightness. Nares, in 
his " Glossary " (vol. i. p. 378), considers that the term " gossa- 
mer " originally came from the French gossanipinc, the cot- 
ton-tree, and is equivalent to cotton-wool. He says that it 
also means any light, downy matter, such as the flying seeds 
of thistles and other plants, and, in poetry, is not unfre- 
quently used to denote the long, floating cobwebs seen in 
fine weather. In the above passage from " King Lear" he 
thinks it has the original sense, and in the one from " Ro- 
meo and Juliet " probably the last. Some are of opinion 
that the word is derived from goss, the gorse or furze.' In 
Germany the popular belief attributes the manufacture of 
the gossamer to the dwarfs and elves. Of King Oberon, it 
may be remembered, we are told, 

" A rich mantle he did wear, 
Made of tinsel gossamer, 
Bestarred over with a few 
Diamond drops of morning dew." 

Hogg, too, introduces it as a vehicle fit for the fairy bands, 
which he describes as 

"sailing 'mid the golden air 
In skiflfs of yielding gossamer." 

Toad. Among the vulgar errors of Shakespeare's day 
was the belief that the head of the toad contained a stone 
possessing great medicinal virtues. In "As You Like It," 
(ii. i), the Duke says : 

" Sweet are the uses of adversity ; 
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, 
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head." 

' See Croker's " Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ire- 
land," edited by T. Wright, 1862, p. 215. 



INSECTS AND REPTILES. 261 

Lupton, in his " One Thousand Notable Things," says that 
" a toad-stone, called Crcpaudina, touching any part enven- 
omed by the bite of a rat, wasp, spider, or other venomous 
beast, ceases the pain and swelling thereof." In the Londes- 
borough Collection is a silver ring of the fifteenth century, 
in which one of these stones is set.' 

It was also generally believed that the toad was highly 
venomous — a notion to which there are constant allusions 
in Shakespeare's plays ; as, for example, in the above pas- 
sage, where it is spoken of as '' ugly and venomous." In 
" Richard III." (i. 2), Lady Anne says to Gloster: 

" Never hung poison on a fouler toad." 

And, in another scene (i. 3), Queen Margaret speaks of" this 
pois'nous bunch-back'd toad." 

Once more, in " Titus Andronicus " (iv. 2), the Nurse de- 
scribes Queen Tamora's babe as being " as loathsome as a 
toad." There is doubtless some truth in this belief, as the 
following quotation from Mr. Frank Buckland's " Curiosities 
of Natural History" seems to show: "Toads are generally 
reported to be poisonous ; and this is perfectly true to a cer- 
tain extent. Like the lizards, they have glands in their skin 
which secrete a white, highly acid fluid, and just behind the 
head are seen two eminences like split beans; if these be 
pressed, this acid fluid will come out — only let the operator 
mind that it docs not get into his eyes, for it generally 
comes out with a jet. There are also other glands dispersed 
through the skin. A dog will never take a toad in his mouth, 
and the reason is that this glandular secretion burns his 
tongue and lips. It is also poisonous to the human subject. 
Mr. Blick, surgeon, of Islip, Oxfordshire,^ tells me that a man 
once made a wager, when half drunk, in a village public-house, 
that he would bite a toad's head off; he did so, but in a 
few hours his lips, tongue, and throat began to swell in a 

' See Brand's "Pop. Antiq.," vol. ii. pp. 50-55; Deuce's "Illustra- 
tions of Shakespeare," pp. 181-183. 

* See " Notes and Queries," 6th series, vol. v. pp. 32, 173 : also, Gil- 
bert White's " Natural History of Selborne," letter xvii. 



262 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



1 



most alarming way, and he was dangerously ill for some 
time." 

Owing to the supposed highly venomous character of the 
toad, " superstition," says Pennant,' " gave it preternatural 
powers, and made it a principal ingredient in the incanta- 
tions of nocturnal hags." Thus, in Macbeth" (iv. i ), the 
witch says : 

" Toad that under cold stone, 
Days and nights has thirty-one 
Swelter'd venom sleeping got. 
Boil thou first i' the charmed pot." 

Pennant adds that this was intended " for a design of the 
first consideration, that of raising and bringing before the 
eyes of Macbeth a hateful second-sight of the prosperity of 
Banquo's line. This shows the mighty power attributed to 
this animal by the dealers in the magic art." 

The evil spirit, too, has been likened by one of our master 
bards to the toad, as a semblance of all that is devilish and 
disgusting (" Paradise Lost," iv. 8oo) : 

" Him they found, 
Squat like a toad, close at the ear of Eve, 
Assaying with all his devilish art to reach 
The organs of her fancy." 

In " Macbeth " (i. i), the paddock or toad is made the 
name of a familiar spirit : 

" Paddock^ calls. — Anon !" 

Wasp. So easily, we are told,* is the wrathful tempera- 
ment of this insect aroused, that extreme irascibility can 
scarcely be better expressed than by the term " waspish." 
It is in this sense that Shakespeare has applied the epithet, 
" her waspish-headed son," in the " Tempest " (iv. i), where 
we are told that Cupid is resolved to be a boy outright. 
Again, in " As You Like It " (iv. 3), Silvius says : 

1 "Zoology," 1766, vol. iii. p. 15. 

" Cf. " Hamlet," iii. 4 ; here paddock is used for a toad. 

^ Patterson's " Insects Mentioned by Shakespeare," 1841, p. 137. 



INSECTS AND REPTILES. 263 

" I know not the contents ; but, as I guess 
By the stern brow and waspish action 
Which she did use as she was writing of it, 
It bears an angry tenor." 

Again, in the "Taming of the Shrew" (ii. i), Petruchio ad- 
dresses his intended spouse in language not highly compli- 
mentary : 

" Pet. Come, come, you wasp ; i' faith, you are too angry. 
Kath. If I be waspish, best beware my sting. 
Pet. My remedy is, then, to pluck it out." 

In the celebrated scene in " Julius Czesar " (iv. 3), in which 
the reconciliation between Brutus and Cassius is effected, 
the word is used in a similar sense : 

" I'll use you for my mirth, yea, for my laughter. 
When you are waspish." ' 

Watcr-Fly. This little insect, which, on a sunny day, may, 
be seen almost on every pool, dimpling the glassy surface 
of the water, is used as a term of reproach by Shakespeare. 
Thus, Hamlet (v. 2), speaking of Osric, asks Horatio, 
"Dost know this water-fly?" In " Troilus and Cressida " 
(v. i), Thersites exclaims : "Ah, how the poor world is pes- 
tered with such water-flies, diminutives of nature." John- 
son says it is the proper emblem of a busy trifler, because it 
skips up and down upon the surface of the water without 
any apparent purpose. 

* Cf. "Titus Andronicus," ii. 3 ; " Henry VIII.," iii. 3. 



CHAPTER X. 

FOLK-MEDICINE. 



n 



Without discussing the extent of Shakespeare's tech- 
nical medical knowledge, the following pages will suffice to 
show that he was fully acquainted with many of the popu- 
lar notions prevalent in his day respecting certain diseases 
and their cures. These, no doubt, he collected partly from 
the literature of the period, with which he was so fully con- 
versant, besides gathering a good deal of information on 
the subject from daily observation. Anyhow, he has be- 
queathed to us some interesting particulars relating to the 
folk-medicine of bygone times, which is of value, in so far as 
it helps to illustrate the history of medicine in past years. 
In Shakespeare's day the condition of medical science was 
very unlike that at the present day. As Mr. Goadby, in his 
"England of Shakespeare" ( 1881, p. 104), remarks, "the 
man of science was always more or less of an alchemist, and 
the students of medicine were usually extensive dealers in 
charms and philtres." If a man wanted bleeding he went 
to a barber-surgeon, and when he required medicine he con- 
sulted an apothecary ; the shop of the latter being well de- 
scribed by Romeo (v. i) : 

" And in his needy shop a tortoise hung, 
An alhgator stuff'd, and other skins 
Of ill-shap'd fishes ; and about his shelves 
A beggarly account of empty boxes, 
Green earthen pots, bladders and musty seeds. 
Remnants of pack-thread and old cakes of roses, 
Were thinly scattered, to make up a show." 

Such a man was as ready " to sell love-philtres to a maiden 
as narcotics to a friar." 

Bleeding. Various remedies were in use in Shakespeare's 



FOLK-MEDICIXE. 265 

day to stop bleeding. Thus, a key, on account of the cold- 
ness of the metal of which it is composed, was often cm- 
ployed ; hence the term "key-cold" became proverbial, 
and is referred to by many old writers. In " Richard III." 
(i. 2), Lady Anne, speaking of the corpse of King Henry the 
Sixth, says 

" Poor key-cold figure of a holy king." 

In the " Rape of Lucrece " (1. 1774) the same expression is 
used : 

"And then in key-cold Lucrece' bleeding stream 
He falls, and bathes the pale fear in his face." 

In Beaumont and Fletcher's "Wild Goose Chase" (iv. 3) 
we read : " For till they be key-cold dead, there's no trust- 
ing of 'em."' 

Another common remedy was the one alluded to in " King 
Lear" (iii. 7), where one of the servants says: 

" I'll fetch some flax, and whites of eggs, 
To apply to his bleeding face." 

This passage has been thought to be parodied in Ben Jon- 
son's play, "The Case is Altered " (ii. 4) : " Go, get a white 
of an egg and a little flax, and close the breach of the head ; 
it is the most conduciblc thing that can be." Mr. Gifford, 
however, has shown the incorrectness of this assertion, point- 
ing out that Jonson's play was written in 1599, some years 
before "King Lear" appeared, while the allusion is "to a 
method of cure common in Jonson's time to every barber- 
surgeon and old woman in the kingdom."^ 

Cobwebs are still used to stanch the bleeding from small 
wounds, and Bottom's words seem to refer to this remedy 
of domestic surgery : " I shall desire you of more acquaint- 
ance, good Master Cobweb; if I cut my finger, I shall make 
bold with you." 

' See Nares's " Glossary,'' vol. ii. p. 482 ; also. Brand's " Pop. Antiq.," 
1849, vol. iii. p. 311 ; Henderson's " Folk-Lore of Northern Counties," 
1879, pp. 168, 169. 

" Aldis Wright's " Notes to King Lear," 1877, p. 179. 



266 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

Anciently, says Mr. Singer, " a superstitious belief was 
annexed to the accident of bleeding at the nose;" hence, in 
the "Merchant of Venice " (ii. 5), Launcelot says: ''It was 
not for nothing that my nose fell a-bleeding on Black Mon- 
day last." In days gone by, it was customary with our fore- 
fathers to be bled periodically, in spring and in autumn, in 
allusion to which custom King Richard refers (" Richard 
II.," i. 1), when he says to his uncle : 

" Our doctors say this is no month to bleed." 

Hence the almanacs of the time generally gave particular 
seasons as the most beneficial for bleeding. The forty-sev- 
enth aphorism of Hippocrates (sect. 6) is, that " persons who 
are benefited by venesection or purging should be bled or 
purged in the spring." 

Blindness. The exact meaning of the term " sand-blind," 
which occurs in the " Merchant of Venice" (ii. 2), is some- 
what obscure: 

"Launcelot. O heavens, this is my true-begotten father! who, being 
more than sand-blind, high gravel blind, knows me not. 

Gobbo. Alack, sir, I am sand-blind, I know you not." 

It probably means very dim -sighted,' and in Nares's 
"Glossary"" it is thus explained: "Having an imperfect 
sight, as if there was sand in the eye." The expression is 
used by Beaumont and Fletcher in " Love's Cure " (ii. i) : 
" Why, signors, and my honest neighbours, will you impute 
that as a neglect of my friends, which is an imperfection in 
me? I have been sand-b/ind {rom. my infancy." The term 
was probably one in vulgar use.^ 

Blistc)'. In the following passage of "Timon of Athens" 
(v. i), Timon appears to refer to the old superstition that a 
lie produces a blister on the tongue, though, in the malice 

' Dyce's " Glossary," p. 381 ; of. the word " Berlue, pur-blinded, made 
sand-blind," Cotgrave's " Fr. and Eng. Diet." 
^ Vol. ii. p. 765. 
^ Bucknill's " Medical Knowledge of Shakespeare," p. 93. 



FOLK-MEDICINE. 267 

of his rage, he imprecates the minor punishment on truth, 
and the old surgery of cauterization on falsehood :" 

" Thou sun, that comfort'st, burn ! — Speak, and be hang'd ; 
For each true word, a blister! and each false 
Be as a caut'rizing to the root o' the tongue, 
Consuming it with speaking!" 

We may also compare the passage in " Winter's Tale " (ii. 2), 
where Paulina declares : 

" If I prove honey-mouth'd, let my tongue blister. 
And never to my red-look'd anger be 
The trumpet any more." " 

Boiic-achc. This was a nickname, in bygone years, for the 
Liics venerea, an allusion to which we find in " Troilus and 
Cressida" (ii. 3), where Thersites speaks of "the bone-ache" 
as " the curse dependent on those that war for a placket." 
Another name for this disease was the " brenning or burn- 
ing," a notice of which we find in " King Lear " (iv. 6). 

Bruise. A favorite remedy in days past for bruises was 
parmaceti, a corruption of spermaceti, in allusion to which 
Hotspur, in " i Henry IV." (i. 3), speaks of it as "the sov- 
ereign'st thing on earth for an inward bruise." So, too, in Sir 
T. Overbury's " Characters," 1616 [" An Ordinaric Fencer "] : 
" His wounds are seldom skin-deepe ; for an inward bruise, 
lambstones and sweetbreads are his only spermaceti." A 
well-known plant called the " Shepherd's Purse " has been 
popularly nicknamed the " Poor Man's Parmacetti," being a 
joke on the Latin word bursa, a purse, which, to a poor 
man, is always the best remedy for his bruises.' In " Romeo 
and Juliet " (i. 2), a plantain-leaf is pronounced to be an ex- 
cellent cure " for your broken shin." Plantain-water was a 
remedy in common use with the old surgeons.* 

» Bucknill's " Medical Knowledge of Shakespeare," p. 258. 
' Cf., too, " Love's Labour's Lost " (v. 2) : 

" A blister on his sweet tongue, with my heart, 
That put Armado's page out of his part." 
= Dr. Prior's " Popular Names of British Plants," 1870, p. 185. 
* " The Medical Knowledge of Shakespeare," i860, p. yd>. 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



^1 



Bubuklc. According to Johnson, this denoted "a red 
pimple." Nares says it is " a corrupt word for a carbuncle, 
or something like ;" and Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, in his " Dic- 
tionary of Archaic and Provincial Words," defines it as a 
botch or imposthume. It occurs in " Henry V." (iii. 6), 
where Fluellen describes Bardolph's face as "all bubukles." 

Burn. The notion of one heat driv^ing out another gave 
rise to the old-fashioned custom of placing a burned part 
near the fire to drive out the fire — a practice, says Dr. Buck- 
nill,' certainly not without benefit, acting on the same prin- 
ciple as the application of turpentine and other stimulants 
to recent burns. This was one of the many instances of 
the ancient homoeopathic doctrine, that what hurts will also 
cure." Thus, in " King John " (iii. i), Pandulph speaks of it: 

" And falsehood falsehood cures ; as fire cools fire 
Within the scorched veins of one new burn'd." 

Again, in the " Two Gentlemen of Verona" (ii. 4), Proteus 
tells how : 

" Even as one heat ano'^-her heat expels, 
Or as one nail by strength drives out another, 
So the remembrance of my former love 
Is by a newer object quite forgotten." 

We may also compare the words of Mowbray in " Richard 
II." (i. i), where a similar idea is contained : 

" I am disgrac'd, impeach'd, and bafifled here ; 
Pierc'd to the soul with slander's venom'd spear, 
The which no balm can cure, but his heart-blood 
Which breath'd this poison." 

Once more, in " Romeo and Juliet" (i. 2), Benvolio relates 

how 

" one fire burns out another's burning, 

One pain is lessen'd by another's anguish ; 

Turn giddy, and be holp by backward turning; 

One desperate grief cures with another's languish." 

Cataract. One of the popular names for this disease of the 

' " The Medical Knowledge of Shakespeare," i860, p. 65. 
■■' See Tylor's " Primitive Culture," vol. i. p. 761. 



FOLK-MEDICINE. 269 

eye was the " web and the pin." Markham, in his " Cheap 
and Good Husbandry" (bk. i. chap, ^y), thus describes it in 
horses : " But for the wart, pearle, pin, or web, which are 
evils grown in or upon the eye, to take them off, take the 
juyce of the herb betin and wash the eye therewith, it will 
weare the spots away." Florio (" Ital. Diet.") gives the fol- 
lowing : " Cataratta is a dimnesse of sight occasioned by hu- 
mores hardened in the eies, called a cataract or a pin and a 
web." Shakespeare uses the term in the " Winter's Tale " 
(i. 2), where Leontes speaks of 

"all eyes blind 
With the pin and web, but theirs ;" 

and in "King Lear" (iii. 4), alluding to "the foul fiend 
Flibbertigibbet," says, " he gives the web and the pin."' 
Acerbi, in his " Travels " (vol. ii. p. 290), has given the Lap- 
land method of cure for this disease. In a fragment of an 
old medical treatise it is thus described : "Another sykenes 
ther byth o{ ycacn ; on a ivcbbc, a nother a wem, that hydyth 
the myddcl of the yezen ; and this lies to maners, other 
whilys he is white and thynne, and other whilys he is 
thykke, as whenne the obtalmye ne is noght clene yhelyd 
up, bote the rote abydyth stylle. Other whilys the webbe is 
noght white but rede, other blake."'' In the Statute of the 
34 and 35 of Henry VIII. a pin and web in the eye is 
recited among the "customable diseases," which honest 
persons, not being surgeons, might treat with herbs, roots, 
and waters, with the knowledge of whose nature God had 
endowed them. 

Chilblains. These arc probably alluded to by the Fool in 
"King Lear" (i. 5): "If a man's brains were in's heels, 
were't not in danger of kibes ?" Hamlet, too, says (v. i): 
" the age is grown so picked, that the toe of the peasant 
comes so near the heel of the courtier, he galls his kibe." 

Deformity. It was an old prejudice, which is not quite ex- 



' See Nares's "Glossary," vol. ii. pp. 660, 661 ; Dycc's " Glossarj'," 
p. 322. 
* Quoted in Singer's " Shakespeare." 



2'jo FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

tinct, that those who are defective or deformed are marked 
by nature as prone to mischief. Thus, in "Richard III." 
(i. 3), Margaret says of Richard, Duke of Gloster: 

" Thou elvish-mark'd, abortive, rooting hog ! 
Thou that was seal'd in thy nativitj' 
The slave of nature, and the son of hell." 

She calls him Jiog, in allusion to his cognizance, which was a 
boar. A popular expression in Shakespeare's day for a de- 
formed person was a" stigmatic." It denoted any one who 
had been stigmatized^ or burned with an iron, as an igno- 
minious punishment, and hence was employed to represent 
a person on whom nature has set a mark of deformity. 
Thus, in " 3 Henry VI." (ii. 2), Queen Margaret says: 

" But thou art neither like thy sire, nor dam ; 
But like a foul misshapen stigmatic 
Mark'd by the destinies to be avoided, 
As venom toads, or lizards' dreadful stings." 

Again, in " 2 Henry VI." (v. 1), young Clifford says to Rich- 
ard : 

" Foul stigmatic, that's more than thou canst tell." 

We may note, too, how, in "A Midsummer-Night's Dream" 
(v. i), mothers' marks and congenital forms are deprecated 
by Oberon from the issue of the happy lovers : 

" And the blots of Nature's hand 
Shall not in their issue stand ; 
Never mole, hare-lip, nor scar. 
Nor mark prodigious, such as are 
Despised in nativity. 
Shall upon their children be."i 

Indeed, constant allusions are to be met with in our old 
writers relating to this subject, showing how strong were the 
feelings of our forefathers on the point. But, to give one 
further instance of this superstition given by Shakespeare, 
we may quote the words of King John (iv. 2), with refer- 

' Cf. " King John " (iii. i), where Conctance gives a catalogue of con- 

[jenital defects. 



FOLK-MEDICINE. 271 

dice to Hubert and his supposed murder of Prince Ar- 
thur: 

" A fellow by the hand of Nature mark'd, 
Quoted, and sign'd, to do a deed of shame, 

• This murder had not come into my mind." 

This adaptation of the mind to the deformity of the body- 
concurs, too, with Bacon's theory: "Deformed persons are 
commonly even with nature; for, as nature hath done ill by 
them, so do they by nature, being void of natural affection, 
and so they have their revenge on nature." 

Drowning. The old superstition' of its being dangerous 
to save a person from drowning is supposed, says Mr. Halli- 
well-Phillipps, to be alluded to in " Twelfth Night." It was 
owing to the belief that the person saved would, sooner or 
later, injure the man who saved him. Thus, in Sir Walter 
Scott's " Pirate," Bryce, the pedler, warns the hero not to 
attempt to resuscitate an inanimate form which the waves 
had washed ashore on the mainland of Shetland. " * Are you 
mad,' exclaimed the pedler, ' you that have lived sae lang in 
Zetland, to risk the saving of a drowning man? Wot ye 
not if ye bring him to life again he will do you some capital 
injury?' " 

Epilepsy. A popular name for this terrible malady was 
the "falling-sickness," because, when attacked with one 
of these fits, the patient falls suddenly to the ground. In 
"Julius Caisar " (i. 2) it is thus mentioned in the following 
dialogue : 

" Cassius. But, soft, I pray you : what, did Caesar swoon ? 

Casca. He fell down in the market-place, and foamed at mouth, and 
was speechless. 

Brutus. 'Tis very like; he hath the falling-sickness. 

Cassius. No, Csesar hath it not ; but you, and I, 
And honest Casca, we have the falling-sickness." 

Fistula. At the present day a fistula means an abscess 
external to the rectum, but in Shakespeare's day it was used 

' "Handbook Inde.x to Shakespeare," p. 150. See "Notes and 
Queries" for superstitions connected with drowning, 5th series, vol. 
ix. pp. Ill, 3 1 8, 478, 516 ; vol. X. pp. 38, 276 ; vol. xi. pp. 119, 278. 



272 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE! 

in a more general signification for a burrowing abscess in 
any situation.' The play of "All's Well that Ends Well" 
has a special interest, because, as Dr. Bucknill says, its very 
plot may be said to be medical. " The orphan daughter of 
a physician cures the king of a fistula by means of a secret 
remedy left to her as a great treasure by her father. The 
royal reward is the choice of a husband among the nobles of 
the court, and ' thereby hangs the tale.' " The story is taken 
from the tale of Gilletta of Narbonne, in the " Decameron " 
of Boccaccio. It came to Shakespeare through the medium 
of Painter's " Palace of Pleasure," and is to be found in the 
first volume, which was printed as early as 1566.'^ The story 
is thus introduced by Shakespeare in the following dialogue 
(i. i), where the Countess of Rousillon is represented as in- 
quiring: 

" What hope is there of his majesty's amendment ? 

La/. He hath abandoned his physicians, madam ; under whose 
practices he hath persecuted time with hope ; and finds no other ad- 
vantage in the process but only the losing of hope by time. 

Count. This young gentlewoman had a father — O, that ' had !' how 
sad a passage 'tis! — whose skill was almost as great as his honesty; 
had it stretched so far, would have made nature immortal, and death 
should have play for lack of work. Would, for the king's sake, he « ; 
were living! I think it would be the death of the king's disease. H| 

Laf. How called you the man you speak of, madam ? 

Count. He was famous, sir, in his profession, and it was his great 
right to be so ; Gerard de Narbon. 

Laf. He was excellent, indeed, madam ; the king very lately spoke 
of him admiringly and mourningly; he was skilful enough to have 
lived still, if knowledge could be set up against mortality. 

Ber. What is it, my good lord, the king languishes of.' 

Laf. A fistula, my lord." 

The account given of Helena's secret remedy and the 
king's reason for rejecting it give, says Dr. Bucknill, an ex- 
cellent idea of the state of opinion with regard to the prac- 
tice of physic in Shakespeare's time." 

Fit. Formerly the term " rapture " was synonymous with 

' Dr. Bucknill's " Medical Knowledge of Shakespeare," p. 95. 

- Singer's " Shakespeare," vol. iii. p. 225. 



FOLK-MEDICINE. 273 

a fit or trance. The word is used by Brutus in "Coriolanus " 

(ii. I): 

" your prattling nurse 
Into a rapture lets her baby cry 
While she chats him." 

Steevens quotes from the " Hospital for London's Fol- 
Hes " (1602), where Gossip Luce says: "Your darling will 
Aveep itself into a rapture, if you take not good heed." ' 

Gold. It was a long-prevailing opinion that a solution of 
gold had great medicinal virtues, and that the incorruptibil- 
ity of the metal might be communicated to a body impreg- 
nated Vv'ith it. Thus, in " 2 Henry IV." (iv. 4), Prince Henry, 
in the course of his address to his father, says: / 

" Coming to look on you, thinking you dead, 
And dead almost, my liege, to think you were, 
I spake unto this crown, as hav^ing sense. 
And thus upbraided it : ' The care on thee depending 
Hath fed upon the body of my father ; 
Therefore, thou, best of gold, art worst of gold ; 
Other, less fine in carat, is more precious, 
Preserving life in medicine potable.'" 

Potable gold was one of the panaceas of ancient quacks. 
In John Wight's translation of the "Secretes of Alexis" is 
a receipt " to dissolve and reducte golde into a potable licour, 
which conserveth the youth and healthe of a man, and will 
heale every disease that is thought incurable, in the space 
of seven dales at the furthest." The receipt, however, is a 
highly complicated one, the gold being acted upon by juice 
of lemons, honey, common salt, and aqua vitcs, and distilla- 
tion frequently repeated from a " urinall of glass" — as the 
oftener it is distilled the better it is. " Thus doyng," it is 
said, " ye shall have a right naturall, and perfecte potable 
golde, whereof somewhat taken alone every monthe once 
or twice, or at least with the said licour, whereof we have 
spoken in the second chapter of this boke, is very excellent 
to preserve a man's youthe and hcalthc, and to heale in a 



' See Singer's " Shakespeare," vol. vii. p. 347. 
18 



274 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



fewe dales any disease rooted in a man, and thought incura- 
ble. The said golde will also be good and profitable for 
diverse other operations and effectes : as good wittes and 
diligent searchers of the secretes of nature may easily judge." 
A further allusion to gold as a medicine is probably made 
in "All's Well that Ends Well" (v. 3), where the King says 
to Bertram : 

" Plutus himself, 
That knows the tinct and multiplying medicine, 
Hath not in nature's mystery more science, 
Than I have in this ring." 

Chaucer, too, in his sarcastic excuse for the doctor's ava- 
rice, refers to this old belief: 

" And yet he was but esy of despence : 
He kept that he wan in the pestilence. 
For gold in physic is a cordial ; 
Therefore he loved it in special." 

Once more, in Sir Kenelm Digby's " Receipts" (1674), we 
are told that the gold is to be calcined with three salts, 
ground with sulphur, burned in a reverberatory furnace 
with sulphur twelve times, then digested with spirit of wine 
" which will be tincted very yellow, of which, few drops 
for a dose in a fit vehicle hath wrought great effects." 

The term " grand liquor" is also used by Shakespeare for 
the aunnn potabilc of the alchemist, as in " Tempest " (v. i) : 

" Where should they 
Find this grand liquor that hath gilded them ?" 

Good Year. This is evidently a corruption of goujcrc, a 
disease derived from the French gouge, a common camp- 
follower, and probably alludes to the Morbus Galliciis. Thus, 
in " King Lear " (v. 3), we read : 

" The good-years shall devour them, flesh and fell, 
Ere they shall make us weep." 

With the corruption, however, of the spelling, the word lost 
in time its real meaning, and it is, consequently, found in 



FOLK-MEDICINE. 2/5 

passages where a sense opposite to the true one is intended/ 
It was often used in exclamations, as in " Merry Wives of 
Windsor " (i. 4) : " We must give folks leave to prate : what, 
the good-jear !" In " Troilus and Cressida " (v. i), Thersites, 
by the " rotten diseases of the south," probably meant the 
Morbus Galliciis. 

Handkerchief. It was formerly a common practice in 
England for those who w^ere sick to wear a kerchief on their 
heads, and still continues at the present day among the 
common people in many places. Thus, in "Julius Caesar" 
(ii. i), we find the following allusion : 

" O, what a time have you chose out, brave Caius, 
To wear a kerchief ! Would you were not sick !" 

" If," says Fuller, " this county [Cheshire] hath bred no 
writers in that faculty [physic], the wonder is the less, if it 
be true wdiat I read, that if any here be sick, they make him 
a posset and tye a kerchief on his head, and if that will not 
mend him, then God be merciful to him."^ 

Hysteria. This disorder, which, in Shakespeare's day, we 
are told, was known as " the mother," or Hysterica passio, 
was not considered peculiar to w^omen only. It is probable 
that, when the poet wrote the following lines in " King 
Lear " (ii. 4), where he makes the king say, 

" O, how this mother swells up toward my heart ! 
Hysterica passio ! down, thou ch'mbing sorrow, 
Thy element's below ! — Where is this daughter ?" 

he had in view the subjoined passages from Harsnct's " Dec- 
laration of Popish Impostures" (1603), a work which, it has 
been suggested,^ " he may have consulted in order to fur- 
nish out his character of Tom of Bedlam with demoniacal 
gibberish." The first occurs at p. 25 : " Ma. Maynie had a 
spice of the hysterica passio, as it seems, from his youth ; hee 

> Wright's " Notes to King Lear" (1877), p. 196. 
^ " Worthies of England " (1662), p. 180. 

' Singer's " Shakespeare,'' pp. 384, 385 ; Wright's " Notes to King 
Lear," pp. 154, 155. 



2;6 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

himselfe termes it the moother (as you may see in his con- 
fessione)," Master Richard Mainy, who was persuaded by 
the priests that he was possessed of the devil, deposes as 
follows (p. 263) : " The disease I speake of was a spice of the 
mother, wherewith I had been troubled (as is before men- 
tioned) before my going into Fraunce. Whether I doe right- 
ly terme it the motJicr or no I know not." Dr. Jordan, in 
1603, published "A Briefe Discourse of a Disease called the 
Suffocation of the Mother." 

Infection. According to an old but erroneous belief, in- 
fection communicated to another left the infector free ; in 
allusion to which Timon (" Timon of Athens, "iv. 3) says: 

" I will not kiss thee ; then the rot returns 
To thine own lips again." 

Among other notions prevalent in days gone by was the 
general contagiousness of disease, to which an allusion seems 
to be made in "A Midsummer-Night's Dream" (i. i), where 
Helena says: 

" Sickness is catching : O, were favour so. 
Yours would I catch, fair Hermia, ere I go." 

Malone considers that Shakespeare, in the following pas- 
sage in " Venus and Adonis," alludes to a practice of his day, 
when it was customary, in time of the plague, to strew the 
rooms of every house with rue and other strong-smelling 
herbs, to prevent infection : 

" Long may they kiss each other, for this cure I 
O, never let their crimson liveries wear ! 
And as they last, their verdure still endure, 
To drive infection from the dangerous year!" 

Again, the contagiousness of pestilence is thus alluded to by 
Beatrice in " Much Ado About Nothing " (i. i) : " O Lord, he 
will hang upon him like a disease : he is sooner caught than 
the pestilence, and the taker runs presently mad." The be- 
lief, too, that the poison of pestilence dwells in the air, is 
spoken of in "Timon of Athens" (iv. 3); 



I 



FOLK-MEDICINE. 277 

" When Jove 
Will o'er some high-viced city hang his poison 
In the sick air." 

And, again, in " Richard II." (i. 3) : 

" Devouring pestilence hangs in our air." 

It is alluded to, also, in " Twelfth Night " (i. i), where the 
Duke says : ^^-"-""^ 

" O, when mine eyes did see Olivia first, 
Methought she purged the air of pestilence." 

While on this subject, we may quote the following dia- 
logue from the same play (ii. 3), which, as Dr. Bucknill' re- 
marks, " involves the idea that contagion is bound up with 
something appealing to the sense of smell, a mellifluous 
voice being miscalled contagious ; unless one could apply 
one organ to the functions of another, and thus admit con- 
tagion, not through its usual portal, the nose :" 

" St'r A/tdreii'. A mellifluous voice, as I am true knight. 
Sir Toby. A contagious breath. 
Sir Andrew. Very sweet and contagious, i' faith. 
Sir Toby. To hear by the nose, it is dulcet in contagion." 

Insanity. That is a common idea that the symptoms of 
madness are increased by the full moon. Shakespeare men- 
tions this popular fallacy in *' Othello " (v. 2), where he tells / 
us that the moon makes men insane when she comes nearer' 
the earth than she was wont.'^ 

Music as a cure for madness is, perhaps, referred to in 
"King Lear" (iv. 7), where the physician of the king 
says: "Louder the music there."' Mr. Singer, however, 
has this note: "Shakespeare considered soft music favora- 
ble to sleep. Lear, we may suppose, had been thus com- 
posed to rest; and now the physician desires louder music 
to be played, for the purpose of waking him." 

' " Medical Knowledge of Shakespeare," p. 121. 

' See p. 73. 

^ Halliwell-Phillipps's "Handbook Index to Shakespeare" (1866), 

P- 333- 



2^8 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

So, in " Richard II." (v. 5), the king says: 

" This music mads me ; let it sound no more ; 
For though it have holp madmen to their wits, 
In me, it seems, it will make wise men mad." 

The power of music as a medical agency has been recog- 
nized from the earhest times, and in mental cases has often 
been highly efficacious.' Referring to music as inducing 
sleep, we may quote the touching passage in " 2 Henry IV." 
(iv. 5), where the king says : 



{/' 



" Let there be no noise made, my gentle friends ; 
Unless some dull and favourable hand 
Will whisper music to my weary spirit. 

IVaruu'ck. Call for the music in the other room." 



Ariel, in " The Tempest " (ii. 1), enters playing solemn music 
to produce this effect. 

A mad-house seems formerly to have been designated a 
'Mark house." Hence, in "Twelfth Night" (iii. 4), the 
reason for putting Malvolio into a dark room was, to make 
him believe that he was mad. In the following act (iv. 2) 
he says : " Good Sir Topas, do not think I am mad ; they 
have laid me here in hideous darkness;" and further on 
(v. i) he asks, 

" Why have you sufTer'd me to be imprison'd, 
Kept in a dark house?" 

In " As You Like It " (iii. 2), Rosalind says that " Love is 
merely a madness, and . . . deserves as well a dark-house and 
a whip as madmen do." 

The expression " horn-mad," i.e., quite mad, occurs in the 
" Comedy of Errors " (ii. i) : "Why, mistress, sure my mas- 
ter is horn-mad." And, again, in " Merry Wives of Windsor " 
(i. 4), Mistress Quickly says, " If he had found the young 
man, he would have been horn-mad." 

Madness in cattle was supposed to arise from a distemper 

1 "A Book of Musical Anecdote," by F. Crowest (1878), vol. ii. pp. 
251, 252, 



FOLK-MEDICIXE. 



279 



in the internal substance of their horns, and furious or mad 
cattle had their horns bound with straw. 

Kings Evil. This was a common name in years gone by 
for scrofula, because the sovereigns of England were sup- 
posed to possess the power of curing it, " without other med- 
icine, save only by handling and prayer." This custom of 
"touching for the king's evil" is alluded to in "Macbeth" 
(iv. 3), where the following dialogue is introduced: 

"Malcolm. Comes the king forth, I pray you ? 

Doctor. Ay, sir ; there are a crew of wretched souls 
That stay his cure ; their malady convinces 
The great assayof art ; but, at his touch — 

Such sanctity hath heaven given his hand 

They presently amend. 

Malcolm. I thank you, doctor. 

Macduff. What's the diseare he means? 

Malcolm. 'Tis call' J the evil : 

A most miraculous work in this good king ; 
Which often, since my here-remain in England, 
I have seen him do. How he solicits heaven, 
Himself best knows : but strangely-visited people. 
All swoln and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye, 
The mere despair of surgery, he cures ; 
Hanging a golden stamp about their necks, 
Put on with holy prayers : and 'tis spoken, 
To the succeeding royalty he leaves 
The healing benediction. With this strange virtue 
He hath a heavenly gift of prophecy ; 
And sundry blessings hang about his throne, 
That speak him full of grace." 

This reference, which has nothing to do with the prog- 
ress of the drama, is introduced, obviously, in compliment 
to King James, who fancied himself endowed with the Con- 
fessor's powers.' The poet found authority for the passage 
in Holinshed (vol. i. p. 279) : " As hath bin thought, he 
was enspired with the gift of prophecie, and also to haue 
haddc the gift of healing infirmities and diseases. Namely, 

' See Beckett's " Free and Impartial Enquiry into the Antiquity and 
Efficacy of Touching for the King's Evil," 1722. 



28o FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

he vsed to help those that were vexed with the disease, 
commonly called the kyngs euill, and left that vertue as it 
were a portion of inheritance vnto his successors the kyngs 
of this realme." Edward's miraculous powers were believed 
in, we are told, by his contemporaries, or at least soon after 
his death, and were expressly recognized by Pope Alexan- 
der III., who canonized him. In Plot's " Oxfordshire " (chap. 
X. sec. 125) there is an account, accompanied with a drawing, 
of the touch-piece supposed to have been given by this mon- 
arch. James I.'s practice of touching for the evil is fre- 
quently mentioned in Nichols's " Progresses." Charles I., 
when at York, touched seventy persons in one day. Indeed, 
few are aware to what an extent this superstition once pre- 
vailed. In the course of twenty years, between 1660 and 
1682, no less than 92,107 persons were touched for this dis- 
ease. The first English monarch who refused to touch for 
the king's evil was William III., but the practice was resumed 
by Queen Anne, who officially announced, in the London Ga- 
zette, March 12, 1712, her royal intention to receive patients 
afflicted with the malady in question. It was probably 
about that time that Johnson was touched by her majesty, 
upon the recommendation of the celebrated physician Sir 
John Floyer, of Lichfield. King George I. put an end to 
this practice, which is said to have originated with Edward 
the Confessor, in 1058.' The custom was also observed by 
French kings; and on Easter Sunday, 1686, Louis XIV. is 
said to have touched 1600 persons. 

Lethargy. This is frequently confounded by medical men 
of former times, and by Shakespeare himself, with apoplexy. 
The term occurs in the list of diseases quoted by Thersites 
in " Troilus and Cressida " (v. i).'' 

L^cprosy. This was, in years gone by, used to denote the 
Ines venerea, as in " Antony and Cleopatra " (iii. 8) : 



'See "Notes and Queries,'' 1861, 2d series, vol. xi. p. 71 ; Burns's 
"History of Parish Registers," 1862, pp. 179, 180; Pettigrew's " Super- 
stitions Connected with Medicine and Surgery," 1844, pp. 11 7-1 54. 

2 Bucknill's " Medical Knowledge of Shakespeare," p. 235. 



FOLK-MEDICINE. 28 1 

" Yon ribaudred nag of Egypt, — 
Whom leprosy o'ertake ! 

* * * * 

Hoists sails and flies." 

Leech. The old medical term for a leech is a "blood- 
sucker," and a knot would be an appropriate term for a 
number of clustering leeches. So, in " Richard III." (iii. 3), 
Grey, being led to the block, says of Richard's minions: 
" A knot you are of damned blood-suckers." 

In " 2 Henry VI." (iii. 2) mention is made by Warwick of 
the " blood-sucker of sleeping men," which, says Dr. Buck- 
nill, appears to mean the vampire-bat. 

Ulcaslcs. This word originally signified leprosy, although 
in modern times used for a very different disorder. Its der- 
ivation is the old French word mescaii, or niescl, a leper. 
Thus, Cotgrave has " Meseau, a meselled, scurvy, leaporous, 
lazarous person." Distempered or scurvied hogs are still 
said to be measled. It is in this sense that it is used in 
" Coriolanus " (iii. i) : 

" As for my country I have shed my blood, 
Not fearing outward force, so shall my lungs 
Coin words till their decay, against those measles, 
Which we disdain should tetter us, yet sought 
The very way to catch them." 

Pleurisy. This denotes a plethora, or redundancy of 
blood, and was so used, probably, from an erroneous idea 
that the word was derived from plus pliiris. It is employed 
by Shakespeare in " Hamlet " (iv. 7) : 

" For goodness, growing to a plurisy, 
Dies in his own too-much." 

In the "Two Noble Kinsmen "(v. i) there is a similar phrase: 

"that heal'st with blood 
The earth when it is sick, and cur'st the world 
O' the plurisy of people. 

The word is frequently used by writers contemporary with 
Shakespeare. Thus, for instance, Massinger, in " The Pict- 
ure " (iv. 2), says : 



282 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

" A plurisy of ill blood you must let out 
By labour." 

Minnmy. This was a preparation for magical purposes, 
made from dead bodies, and was used as a medicine both 
long before and long after Shakespeare's day. Its virtues 
seem to have been chiefly imaginary, and even the traffic 
in it fraudulent." The preparation of mummy is said to 
have been first brought into use in medicine by a Jewish 
physician, who wrote that flesh thus embalmed was good 
for the cure of divers diseases, and particularly bruises, to 
prevent the blood's gathering and coagulating. It has, 
however, long been known that no use whatever can be de- 
rived from it in medicine, and " that all which is sold in the 
shops, whether brought from Venice or Lyons, or even 
directly from the Levant by Alexandria, is factitious, the 
work of certain Jews, who counterfeit it by drying carcasses 
in ovens, after having prepared them with powder of myrrh, 
caballine aloes, Jewish pitch, and other coarse or unwhole- 
some drugs." ^ Shakespeare speaks of this preparation. 
Thus Othello (iii. 4), referring to the handkerchief which he 
had given to Desdemona, relates how : 

" it was dyed in mummy which the skilful 
Conserv'd of maidens' hearts." 

And, in "Macbeth" (iv. i), the "witches' mummy''' forms 
one of the ingredients of the boiling caldron. Webster, in 
" The White Devil " (1857, p. 5), speaks of it : 

" Your followers 
Have swallow'd you like mummia, and, being sick, 
With such unnatural and horrid physic, 
Vomit you up i' the kennel." 

Sir Thomas Browne, in his interesting " Fragment on Mum- 
mies," tells us that Francis I. always carried mummy ^ with 

' See Pettigrew's "History of Mummies," 1834; also Gannal, 
"Traite d'Embaumement," 1838. 

" Rees's " Encyclopaedia," 1829, vol. xxiv. 

^ Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, in his " Handbook Index to Shakespeare," 
1866, p. 332, calls it a balsamic liquid. 



FOLK-MEDICINE. 



283 



him as a panacea against all disorders. Some used it for 
epilepsy, some for gout, some used it as a styptic. He fur- 
ther adds: "The common opinion of the virtues of mum- 
my bred great consumption thereof, and princes and great 
men contended for this strange panacea, wherein Jews dealt 
largely, manufacturing mummies from dead carcasses, and 
giving them the names of kings, while specifics were com- 
pounded from crosses and gibbets leavings." 

Nightmare. There are various charms practised, in this 
and other countries, for the prevention of nightmare, many 
of which are exceedingly quaint. In days gone by it ap- 
pears that St. Vitalis, whose name has been corrupted into 
St. Withold, was invoked ; and, by way of illustration, The- 
obald quotes from the old play of "King John"' the fol- 
lowing : 

" Sweet S. Withold, of thy lenitie, defend us from cxtremitie." 

Shakespeare, alluding to the nightmare, in his " King Lear" 
(iii. 4), refers to the same saint, and gives us a curious old 

charm : 

" Saint Withold footed thrice the old [wold] ; 
He met the night-mare, and her nine-fold ; 
Bid her alight 
And her troth plight, 
And, aroint thee, witch, aroint thee !" 

For what purpose, as Mr. Singer' has pointed out, the incu- 
bus is enjoined to -"plight her troth," will appear from a 
charm against the nightmare, in Reginald Scot's " Discovery 
of Witchcraft," which occurs, with slight variation, in Fletch- 
er's " Monsieur Thomas " (iv. 6) : 

" St. George, St. George, our lady's knight. 
He walks by day, so does he by night. 
And when he had her found, 
He her beat and her bound. 
Until to him her troth she plight, 
She would not stir from him that night." 



' " Six Old Plays," ed. Nichols, p. 256, quoted by Mr. Aldis Wright, 
in his " Notes to King Lear,"' 1877, p. 170. 
^ " Shakespeare," vol. ix. p. 413. 



284 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

Paralysis. An old term for chronic paralysis was "cold 
palsies," which is used by Thersites in " Troilus and Cres- 
sida" (v. iV 

Philosopher s Stone. This was supposed, by its touch, to 
convert base metal into gold. It is noticed by Shakespeare 
in " Antony and Cleopatra " (i. 5) : 

" Alexas. Sovereign of Egypt, hail ! 

Cleopatra. How much unHke art thou Mark Antony! 
Yet, coming from him, that great medicine hath 
With his tinct gilded thee." 

The alchemists call the matter, whatever it may be, say.s 
Johnson, by which they perform transmutation, a medicine. 
Thus, Chapman, in his " Shadow of Night " (i 594) : " O, then, 
thou ^r^<^^ elixir of all treasures;" on which passage he has 
the following note : " The philosopher's stone, or philosophiea 
medicina, is called the great elixir.'" Another reference oc- 
curs in " Timon of Athens" (ii. 2), where the Fool, in reply 
to the question of Varro's Servant, " What is a whoremaster, 
fool?" answers, "A fool in good clothes, and something like 
thee, 'Tis a spirit : sometime 't appears like a lord ; some- 
time like a lawyer; sometime like a philosopher, with two 
stones moe than's artificial one," etc. ; a passage which John- 
son explains as meaning " more than the philosopher's stone," 
or twice the value of a philosopher's stone ; though, as Far- 
mer observes, " Gower has a chapter, in his ' Confessio Aman- 
tis,' of the three stones that philosophers made." Singer,'' 
in his note on the philosopher's stone, says that Sir Thomas 
Smith was one of those who lost considerable sums in seek- 
ing of it. Sir Richard Steele was one of the last eminent 
men who entertained hopes of being successful in this pur- 
suit. His laboratory was at Poplar.' 

Pimple. In the Midland Counties, a common name for a 
pimple, which, by rubbing, is made to smart, or rubbed to 



^ Bucknill's " Medical Knowledge of Shakespeare," p. 235. 

"^ " Shakespeare," 1875, vol. iii. p. 284. 

^ See Pettigrew's " Medical Superstitions," pp. 13, 14. 



FOLK-MEDICINE. 



285 



sense, is "a quat." The word occurs in "Othello" (v. i), 
Avhere Roderigo is so called by lago : 

" I have rubb'd this young quat almost to the sense, 
And he grows angry." 

— Roderigo being called a quat by the same mode of speech 
as a low fellow is now called a scab. It occurs in Langham's 
"Garden of Health," p. 153: "The leaves [of coleworts] 
laid to by themselves, or bruised with barley meale, are 
good for the inflammations, and soft swellings, burnings, 
impostumes, and cholerick sores or quats," etc. 

Plague. " Tokens," or " God's tokens," were the terms 
for those spots on the body which denoted the infection of 
the plague. In " Love's Labour's Lost " (v. 2), Biron says : 

" For the Lord's tokens on you do I see ;" 

and in "Antony and Cleopatra" (iii. 10) there is another 
allusion : 

" Enobarbus. How appears the fight ? 

Scarns. On our side like the token'd pestilence, 
Where death is sure." 

In " Troilus and Cressida " (ii. 3), Ulysses says of Achilles: 

" He is so plaguy proud that the death tokens of it 
Cry — ' No recovery.' " 

King Lear, too, it would seem, compares Goneril (ii. 4) to 
these fatal signs, when he calls her " a plague sore." When 
the tokens had appeared on any of the inhabitants, the house 
was shut up, and "Lord have mercy upon us" written or 
printed upon the door. Hence Biron, in " Love's Labour's 
Lost " (v. 2), says : 

•' Write, ' Lord have mercy on us,' on those three ; 
They are infected, in their hearts it lies ; 
They have the plague, and caught it of your eyes." 

The " red pestilence," referred to by Volumnia in " Cori- 
olanus" (iv. i), probably alludes to the cutaneous eruptions 
common in the plague: 



286 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

" Now the red pestilence strike all trades in Rome, 
And occupations perish !" 

In " The Tempest " (i. 2), Caliban says to Prospero, " The 
red plague rid you." 

Poison. According to a vulgar error prevalent in days 
gone by, poison was supposed to swell the body, an allusion 
to which occurs in "Julius Caesar" (iv. 3), where, in the 
quarrel between Brutus and Cassius, the former declares : 

" You shall digest the venom of your spleen, 
Though it do split you." 

We may also compare the following passage in " 2 Henry 
IV." (iv. 4), where the king says : 

" Learn this, Thomas, 
And thou shalt prove a shelter to thy friends ; 
A hoop of gold to bind thy brothers in. 
That the united vessel of their blood, 
Mingled with venom of suggestion — 
As, force perforce, the age will pour it in — 
Shall never leak, though it do work as strong 
As aconitum, or rash gunpowder." 

In " King John," Hubert, when describing the effect of 
the poison upon the monk (v. 6), narrates how his " bowels 
suddenly burst out." This passage also contains a reference 
to the popular custom prevalent in the olden days, of great 
persons having their food tasted by those who were sup- 
posed to have made themselves acquainted with its whole- 
someness. This practice, however, could not always afford 
security when the taster was ready to sacrifice his own life, 
as in the present case : ' 

''Hubert. The king, I fear, is polson'd by a monk; 
I left him almost speechless. . . . 
Bastard. How did he take it ? who did taste to him ? 
Hubert. A monk, I tell you ; a resolved villain." 

The natives of Africa have been supposed to be possessed 
of the secret how to temper poisons with such art as not 

' Bucknill's "Medical KnoT/ledge of Shakespeare," p. 136. 



FOLK-MEDICINE. 287 

to operate till several years after they were administered. 
Their drugs were then as certain in their effect as subtle in 
their preparation.' Thus, in " The Tempest " (iii. 3), Gonzalo 
says : 

" All three of them are desperate : their great guilt, 

Like poison given to work a great time after, 

Now 'gins to bite the spirits." 

The belief in slow poisoning was general in bygone times, 
although no better founded on fact, remarks Dr. Bucknill,'' 
than the notion that persons burst with poison, or that 
narcotics could, like an alarum clock, be set for a certain 
number of hours. So, in " Cymbeline " (v. 5), Cornelius re- 
lates to the king the queen's confession : 

" She did confess, she had 
For you a mortal mineral ; which, being took, 
Should by the minute feed on life, and, lingering, 
By inches waste you." 

Pomander. This was either a composition of various per- 
fumes wrought in the shape of a ball or other form, and worn 
in the pocket or hung about the neck, and even sometimes 
suspended to the wrist ; or a case for containing such a 
mixture of perfumes. It was used as an amulet against the 
plague or other infections, as well as for an article of lu.Kury. 
There is an allusion to its use in the "Winter's Tale" (iv. 3), 
by Autolycus, who enumerates it among all his trumpery 
that he had sold. The following recipe for making a po- 
mander we find in an old play :^ " Your only way to make a 
pomander is this: take an ounce of the purest garden mould, 
cleans'd and steep'd seven days in change of motherless 
rose-water. Then take the best labdanum, benjoin, with 
storaxes, ambergris, civet, and musk. Incorporate them to- 
gether, and work them into what form you please. This, 
if your breath be not too valiant, will make you smell as 
sweet as any lady's dog." 

> Singer's " Shakespeare," vol. i. p. 65. 

'■^ " Medical Knowledge of Shakespeare," p. 226. 

" Quoted in Narcs's " Glossary," vol. ii. p. 671. 



288 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

Rheumatism. In Shakespeare's day this was used in a far 
wider sense than nowadays, including, in addition to what 
is now understood by the term, distillations from the head, 
catarrhs, etc. Malone quotes from the " Sidney Memori- 
als" (vol. i. p. 94), where the health of Sir Henry Sidney is 
described : " He hath verie much distempored divers parts 
of his bodie ; as namelie, his heade, his stomack, &c., and 
thereby is always subject to distillacions, coughes, and other 
rumatick diseases." Among the many superstitions relating 
to the moon,' one is mentioned in "A Midsummer-Night's 
Dream" (ii. i), where Titania tells how the moon, 

" Pale in her anger, washes all the air, 
That rheumatic diseases do abound." 

The word '' rheumatic " was also formerly used in the sense 
of choleric or peevish, as in " 2 Henry IV." (ii. 4), where the 
Hostess says : " You two never meet but you fall to some 
discord : you are both, in good troth, as rheumatic as two 
dry toasts." Again, in " Henry V." (ii. 3), the Hostess says 
of Falstaff: "A' did in some sort, indeed, handle women; 
but then he was rheumatic,^ and talked of the whore of 
Babylon." 

Serpigo. This appears to have been a term extensively 
used by old medical authors for any creeping skin disease, 
being especially applied to that known as the he?'pes circi- 
natus. The expression occurs in "Measure for Measure" 
(iii. 1), being coupled by the Duke with " the gout " and the 
" rheum." In " Troilus and Cressida" (ii. 3), Thersites says: 
" Now, the dry serpigo on the subject." 

Sickness. Sickness of stomach, which the slightest disgust 
is apt to provoke, is still expressed by the term "queasy;" 
hence the word denoted delicate, unsettled ; as in " King 
Lear" (ii. i), where it is used by Edmund : 

" I have one thing, of a queasy question, 
Which I must act." 

' See p. 74. 

"^ Malone suggests that the hostess may mean " then he was lunatic." 



FOLK-MEDICINE. 289 

So Ben Jonson employs it in " Sejanus" (i. i) : 

" These times are rather queasy to be touched." 

Sigh. It was a prevalent notion that sighs impair the 
strength and wear out the animal powers. Thus, in " 2 Hen- 
ry VI." (iii. 2), Queen Margaret speaks of " blood-drinking 
sighs." We may, too, compare the words of Oberon in "A 
Midsummer-Night's Dream " (iii. 2), who refers to " sighs of 
love, that cost the fresh blood dear." In '* 3 Henry VI." 
(iv. 4), Queen Elizabeth says : 

" for this I draw in many a tear, 
And stop the rising of blood-sucking sighs." 

Once more, in "Hamlet" (iv. 7), the King mentions the 
" spendthrift sigh, that hurts by easing." Fenton, in liis 
"Tragical Discourses" (1579), alludes to this notion in the 
following words : " Your scorching sighes that have already 
drayned your body of his wholesome humoures." 

It was also an ancient belief that sorrow consumed the 
blood and shortened life. Hence Romeo tells Juliet (iii. 5): 

" And trust me, love, in my eye so do you : 
Dry sorrow drinks our blood." 

Sviall-pox. Such a terrible plague was this disease in the 
da}'s of our ancestors, that its name was used as an impreca- 
tion. Thus, in " Love's Labour's Lost" (v. 2), the Princess 
says : " A pox of that jest." 

Saliva. The color of the spittle was, with the medical 
men of olden times, an important point of diagnosis. Thus, 
in " 2 Henry IV." (i. 2), Falstaff exclaims against fighting on 
a hot day, and wishes he may " never spit white again," 
should it so happen.' 

Sterility. The charm against sterility referred to by Cae- 
sar in " Julius Caesar" (i. 2) is copied from Plutarch, who, in 
his description of the festival Lupercalia, tells us how " noble 
young men run naked through the city, striking in sport 

' Bucknill's " Medical Knowledge of Shakcspccrc." p. 150. 

19 



290 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



whom they meet in the way with leather thongs," which 
blows were commonly beHeved to have the wonderful effect 
attributed to them by Caesar: 

" The barren, touched in this holy chase, 
Shake ofif their sterile curse." 

Suicide. Cominius, in " Coriolanus " (i. 9), arguing against 
Marcius's overstrained modesty, refers to the manner in 
which suicide was thought preventable in olden times : 

" If 'gainst yourself you be incens'd, we'll put you. 
Like one that means his proper harm, in manacles. 
Then reason safely with you." 

Toothache. It was formerly a common superstition — and 
one, too, not confined to our own country — that toothache 
was caused by a little worm, having the form of an eel, which 
gradually gnawed a hole in the tooth. In " Much Ado About 
Nothing " (iii. 2), Shakespeare speaks of this curious belief: 

" Do)i Pedro. What ! sigh for the toothache ? 
Leonato. Where is but a humour, or a worm." 

This notion was, some years ago, prevalent in Derbyshire,* 
where there was an odd way of extracting, as it was thought, 
the worm. A small quantity of a mixture, consisting of dry 
and powdered herbs, was placed in some small vessel, into 
which a live coal from the fire was dropped. The patient 
then held his or her open mouth over the vessel, and inhaled 
the sm.oke as long as it could be borne. The cup was then 
taken away, and in its place a glass of water was put before 
the patient. Into this glass the person breathed hard for a 
few moments, when it was supposed the grub or worm could 
be seen in the water. In Orkney, too, toothache goes by 
the name of " the worm," and, as a remedy, the following 
charm, called "wormy lines," is written on a piece of paper, 
and worn as an amulet, by the person affected, in some part 
:of his dress : 

' See " English Folk-Lore," p. 156. 



FOLK-MEDICINE. 201 

" Peter sat on a marble stone weeping ; 
Christ came past, and said, ' What aileth thee, Peter?' 
'O my Lord, my God, my tooth doth ache.' 
' Arise, O Peter ! go thy way ; thy tooth shall ache no more.' " 

This notion is still current in Germany, and is mentioned by 
Thorpe, in his "Northern Mythology" (vol. iii. p. 167), who 
quotes a North German incantation, beginning, 

" Pear tree, I complain to thee ; 
Three worms sting me." 

It is found, too, even in China and New Zealand,' the fol- 
lowing charm being used in the latter country : 

" An eel, a spiny back 
True indeed, indeed : true in sooth, in sooth. 
You must eat the head 
Of said spiny back." 

A writer in the AtJicncEnni (Jan. 28, i860), speaking of the 
Rev. R. H. Cobbold's " Pictures of the Chinese, Drawn by 
Themselves," says : " The first portrait is that of a quack 
doctress, who pretends to cure toothache by extracting a 
maggot — the cause of the disorder. This is done — or, rather, 
pretended to be done — by simply placing a bright steel pin 
on the part affected, and tapping the pin with a piece of 
wood. Mr. Cobbold compares the operation to procuring 
worms for fishing by working a spade backwards and for- 
wards in the ground. He and a friend submitted to the 
process, but in a very short time compelled the doctress to 
desist, by the excessive precautions they took against im- 
position." We may further note that John of Gatisden, 
one of the oldest medical authors, attributes decay of the 
teeth to "a humour or a worm." In his " Rosa Anglica"' 
he says : " Si vermes sint in dentibus, 3 semen porri, seu 
lusquiami contere et misce cum cera, pone super carbones, 
et fumus recipiatur per embotum, quoniam sanat. Solum 
etiam semen lusquiami valet coctum in aqua calida, supra 

'See Shortland's "Traditions and Superstitions of the New-Zea- 
landers," 1856, p. 131. 
' Liber Secundus— " De Febribus," p. 923, ed. 1595. 



2Q2 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

quam aquam patiens palatum apertum si tenuerit, cadent 
vermes evidenter vel in illam aquam, vel in aliam quae ibi 
fuerit ibi posita. De myrrha et aloe ponantur in dentem, 
ubi est vermis: semen caulis, et absinthium, per se vermes 
interficit." 

Tub-fast. In years past *' the discipline of sweating in a 
heated tub for a considerable time, accompanied with strict 
abstinence, was thought necessary for the cure of venereal 
taint."' Thus, in " Timon of Athens" (iv. 3), Timon says 
to Timandra : 

" Be a whore still ! they love thee not that use thee ; 
Give them diseases, leaving with thee their lust. 
Make use of thy salt hours : season the slaves 
For tubs and baths : bring down rose-cheeked youth 
To the tub-fast, and the diet." 

As beef, too, was usually salted down in a tub, the one 
process was jocularly compared to the other. So, in " Meas- 
ure for Measure" (iii. 2), Pompey, wdien asked by Lucio 
about his mistress, replies, " Troth, sir, she hath eaten up 
all her beef, and she is herself in the tub." Again, in "Hen- 
ry V." (ii. i), Pistol speaks of" the powdering-tub of infamy." 

Vinegar. In Shakespeare's day this seems to have been 
termed " eisel" (from A. S. aiscl), being esteemed highly 
efficacious in preventing the communication of the plague 
and other contagious diseases. In this sense it has been 
used by Shakespeare in Sonnet cxi. : 

"like a willing patient, I will drink 
Potions of eisel, 'gainst my strong infection." 

In a MS. Herbal in the library of Trinity College, Cam- 
bridge, occurs "acetorum, an" vynegre or aysel." The 
word occurs again in " Hamlet " (v. i), where Laertes is 
challenged by Hamlet : 

" Woo't drink up eisel ? eat a crocodile ?" * 

The word w^oo't, in the northern counties, is the common 
contraction of ivoiddst thou, which is the reading of the old 

^ Nares's " Glossary,"' vol. ii. p. 906. 



FOLK-MEDICINE. 29^ 

copies. In former years it was the fashion with gallants to 
do some extravagant feat, as a proof of their love, in honor 
of their mistresses, and, among others, the swallowing of 
some nauseous potion was one of the most frequent. Hence, 
in the above passage, some bitter potion is evidently meant, 
which it was a penance to drink. Some are of opinion that 
ivon/iivood \s alluded to; and Mr. Singer thinks it probable 
that " the propoma called absinthites, a nauseously bitter 
medicament then much in use, may have been in the poet's 
mind, to drink up a quantity of which would be an extreme 
pass of amorous demonstration." It has been suggested by 
a correspondent of "Notes and Queries,"' that the refer- 
ence in this passage from " Hamlet " is to a Lake Esyl, which 
figures in Scandinavian legends. Messrs. Wright and Clark, 
however, in their " Notes to Hamlet" ( 1876, p. 218), say 
that they have consulted Mr. Magnusson on this point, and 
he writes as follows : " No such lake as Esyl is known to 
Norse mythology and folk-lore." Steevens supposes it to 
be the river YsselL' 

IVatcr-castiiig. The fanciful notion of recognizing dis- 
eases by the mere inspection of the urine was denounced 
years ago, by an old statute of the College of Ph3'sicians, as 
belonging to tricksters and impostors, and any member of 
the college was forbidden to give advice by this so-called 
"water-casting" without he also saw the patient. The stat- 
ute of the college runs as follows: " Statuimus, et ordina- 
mus, ut nemo, sive socius, sive candidatus, sive pcrmissus 
consilii quidquam impertiat veteratoriis, et impostoribus, 
super urinarum nuda inspectione, nisi simul ad xgrum voce- 
tur, ut ibidem, pro re natu, idonea medicamenta ab honesto 
aliquo pharmacopoea componenda prnescribat." An allu- 
sion to this vulgar error occurs in the " Two Gentlemen of 
Verona" (ii. i), where, after Speed has given to Valentine 
his amusing description of a lover, in which, among other 
signs, are " to walk alone, like one that had the pestilence," 

' See 4th series, vol. x. pp. loS, 1 50, 229, 282, 356. 
' See Dyce's " Shakespeare," vol. vii. p. 239. 



2Q4. FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

and " to fast, like one that takes diet," the following quib- 
ble takes place upon the within and the without of the 
symptoms : 

" Valcniinc. Are all these things perceived in me ? 

Speed. They are all perceived without ye. 

Vahmtine. Without me ? they cannot. 

Speed. Without you ? nay, that's certain ; for, without you were so 
simple, none else would : but you are so without these follies, that 
these follies are within you, and shine through you like the water in 
an urinal, that not an eye that sees you but is a physician to comment 
on your malady." 

This singular pretence, says Dr. Bucknill,' is " alleged to 
have arisen, like the barber surgery, from the ecclesiastical 
interdicts upon the medical vocations of the clergy. Priests 
and monks, being unable to visit their former patients, are 
said first to have resorted to the expedient of divining the 
malady, and directing the treatment upon simple inspection 
of the urine. However this may be, the practice is of very 
ancient date." Numerous references to this piece of med- 
ical quackery occur in many of our old writers, most of 
whom condemn it in very strong terms. Thus Forestus, in 
his " Medical Politics," speaks of it as being, in his opinion, 
a practice altogether evil, and expresses an earnest desire 
that medical men would combine to repress it. Shake- 
speare gives a further allusion to it in the passage where he 
makes Macbeth (v. 3) say : 

" If thou couldst, doctor, cast 
The water of my land, find her disease, 
And purge it to a sound and pristine health, 
I would applaud thee to the very echo." 

And in " 2 Henry IV " (i. 2) Falstaff asks the page, " What 
says the doctor to my water?" and, once more, in " Twelfth 
Night " (iii. 4), Fabian, alluding to Malvolio, says, " Carry his 
water to the wise woman." 

' "The Medical Knowledge of Shakespeare," i36o, pp. 1-64. 



FOLK-MEDICINE. 



-95 



It seems probable, too, that, in the " Merry Wives of 
Windsor" (ii. 3), the term "mock-water," employed by the 
host to the French Dr. Caius, refers to the mockery of 
judging of diseases by the water or urine — " mock-water," 
in this passage, being equivalent to " you pretending water- 
doctor !" 



CHAPTER. XI. 

CUSTOMS CONNECTED WITH THE CALENDAR. 

In years gone by the anniversaries connected with the 
calendar were kept up with, an amount of enthusiasm and 
merry-making quite unknown at the present day. Thus, 
for instance, Shakespeare tells us, with regard to the May- 
day observance, that it was looked forward to so eagerly 
as to render it impossible to make the people sleep on this 
festive occasion. During the present century the popular 
celebrations of the festivals have been gradually on the de- 
cline, and nearly every year marks the disuse of some local 
custom. Shakespeare has not omitted to give a good many 
scattered allusions to the old superstitions and popular 
usages associated with the festivals of the year, some of 
which still survive in our midst. 

Alluding to the revels, there can be no doubt that Shake- 
speare was indebted to the revel-books for some of his plots. 
Thus, in "The Tempest " (iv. i), Prospero remarks to Ferdi- 
nand and Miranda, after Iris, Ceres, and Juno have appeared, 
and the dance of the nymphs is over: 

" You do look, my son, in a mov'd sort, 
As if you were dismay'd ; be cheerful, sir. 
Our revels now are ended. These our actors, 
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and 
Are melted into air, into thin air: 
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision. 
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, 
The solemn temples, the great globe itself. 
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, 
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, 
Leave not a rack behind." 

It has been inferred that Shakespeare was present at 
Kenilworth, in 1575, when Elizabeth was so grandly enter- 



CUSTOMS CONXECTED WITH THE CALENDAR. 297 

tained there. Lakes and seas are represented in the masque. 
Triton, in the Hkeness of a mermaid, came towards the 
queen, says George Gascoigne, and " Arion appeared, sitting 
on a dolphin's back." In the dialogue in "A Midsummer- 
Night's Dream," between Oberon and Puck (ii. i ), there 
seems a direct allusion to this event : 

" Oberon. My gentle Puck, come hither. Thou remember'st 
Since once I sat upon a promontory, 
And heard a mermaid on a dolphin's back 
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath, 
That the rude sea grew civil at her song. 
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres, 
To hear the sea-maid's music. 

Pttck. I remember." 

Then, too, there were the " Children of the Revels," a com- 
pany who performed at Blackfriars Theatre. In " Hamlet" 
( ii. 2 ), Shakespeare alludes to these "children-players."' 
Rosencrantz says, in the conversation preceding the entry 
of the players, in reply to Hamlet's inquiry whether the 
actors have suffered through the result of the late inhibi- 
tion, evidently referring to the plague, " Nay, their endeav- 
our keeps in the wonted pace ; but there is, sir, an aery of 
children, little eyases, that cry out on the top of question, 
and are most tyrannically clapped for 't ; these are now the 
fashion ; and so berattle the common stages — so they call 
them — that many wearing rapiers are afraid of goose-quills, 
and dare scarce come thither." 

Txi'clfth-Day. There can be no doubt that the title of 

Shakespeare's play, " Twelfth Night," took its origin in the 

festivities associated with this festival. The season has, 

from time immemorial, been one of merriment, " the more 

decided from being the proper close of the festivities of 

' Christmas, when games of chance were traditionally rife, 

1 and the sport of sudden and casual elevation gave the tone 

I of the time. Of like tone is the play, and to this,"' says Mr. 

I ' "The England of Shakespeare," E. Goadby, i88r, p. 153. 

""Critical Essays on the Plays of Shakespeare," 1875, p. 145; see 
^ Singer's " Shakespeare," vol. iii. pp. 347. 348- 



298 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



Lloyd, " it apparently owes its title." The play, it appears, 
was probably originally acted at the barristers' feast at the 
Middle Temple, on February 2, 1601-2, as Manningham tells 
us in his " Diary" (Camden Society, 1868, ed. J. Bruce, p. 18). 
It is worthy of note that the festive domgs of the Inns of 
Court, in days gone by, at Christmas-tide were conducted 
on the most extravagant scale.' In addition to the merry 
disports of the Lord of Misrule, there were various revels. 
The Christmas masque at Gray's Inn, in 1594, was on a mag- 
nificent scale. 

St. Valentine s Day (Feb. 14). Whatever may be the his- 
torical origin of this festival, whether heathen or Christian, 
there can be no doubt of its antiquity. According to an old 
tradition, to which Chaucer refers, birds choose their mates 
on this day; and hence, in "A Midsummer-Night's Dream" 
(iv. i), Theseus asks : 

" Good morrow, friends. St. Valentine is past : 
Begin these wood-birds but to couple now.^" 

From this notion, it has been suggested, arose the once pop- 
ular practice of choosing valentines, and also the common 
belief that the first two single persons who meet in the morn- 
ing of St. Valentine's day have a great chance of becoming 
wed to each other. This superstition is alluded to in Ophe- 
lia's song in " Hamlet " (iv. 5) : 

" To-morrow is Saint Valentine's day, 
All in the morning betime, 
I And I a maid at your window, 

\/^ To be your valentine." 

There seems every probability that St. Valentine's day, 
with its many customs, has come down to us from the Ro- 
mans, but was fathered upon St, Valentine in the earlier 
ages of the Church in order to Christianize it.^ In France 
St. Valentine's was a movable feast, celebrated on the first 

' See " British Popular Customs," p. 473. 

- " Notes and Queries," 6th series, vol. i. p. 129. 



CUSTOMS CONNECTED WITH THE CALENDAR. 299 

Sunday in Lent, which was called the Jour dcs brandoiis, be- 
cause the boys carried about lighted torches on that day. 

Shrove-Tiiesday . This day was formerly devoted to feast- 
ing and merriment of every kind, but whence originated the 
custom of eating pancakes is still a matter of uncertainty. 
The practice is alluded to in " All's Well that Ends Well " 
(ii. 2), where the clown speaks of " a pancake for Shrove- 
Tuesday.'" In "Pericles" (ii. i) they are termed "flap- 
jacks," a term used by Taylor, the W^ater-Poet, in his " Jack- 
a-Lent Workes " (1630, vol. i. p. 115): " Until at last by the 
skill of the cooke it is transformed into the form of a flap- 
jack, which in our translation is called a pancake." Shrove- 
tide was, in times gone by, a season of such mirth that shrov- 
iiig, or to shrove, signified to be merry. Hence, in " 2 Henry 
IV." (v. 3), Justice Silence says: 

" Be merry, be merry, my wife has all ; _^^,,^' 

For women are shrews, both short and tall ; 
'Tis merry in hall, when beards wag all. 
And welcome merry shrove-tide. 
Be merr}-, be merry." 

It was a holiday and a day of license for apprentices, labor- 
ing persons, and others." 

Lent. This season was at one time marked by a custom 
now fallen into disuse. A figure, made up of straw and cast- 
off clothes, was drawn or carried through the streets amid 
much noise and merriment ; after which it was either burned, 
shot at, or thrown down a chimney. This image was called 
a " Jack-a-Lent," and was, according to some, intended to 
represent Judas Iscariot. It occurs twice in the " Merry 
Wives of Windsor ;" once merely as a jocular appellation 
(iii. 3), where IMrs. Page says to Robin, " You little Jack-a- 
Lent, have you been true to us?" and once (v. 5) as a butt, 

' Cf. "As You Like It"' (i. 2). Touchstone alludes to a "certain 
knight, that swore by his honour they were good pancakes.'' 

* See Hone's "Every Day Book."' 1836. vol. i. p. 258: "Book of 
Days,'' vol. i^p. 239; see, also, Dekker's "Seven Deadly Sins," 1606, 
p. 35 ; " British Popular Customs," pp. 62-91. 



300 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



or object of satire and attack, Falstaff remarking, " How wit 
may be made a Jack-a-Lent, when 'tis upon ill employment !" 
It is alluded to by Ben Jonson in his " Tale of a Tub " (iv. 2) : 

" Thou cam'st but half a thing into the world, 
And wast made up of patches, parings, shreds ; 
Thou, that when last thou wert put out of service, 
Travell'd to Hamstead Heath on an Ash Wednesday, 
Where thou didst stand six weeks the Jack of Lent, 
For boys to hurl three throws a penny at thee, 
To make thee a purse." 

Elderton, in a ballad called " Lenton Stuff," in a MS. in 
the Ashmolean Museum, thus concludes his account of 
Lent : ' 

"When Jakke a' Lent comes justlynge in. 
With the hedpeece of a herynge. 
And saythe, repent yowe of yower syn. 

For shame, syrs, leve yowre swerynge : 
And to Palme Sonday doethe he ryde. 

With sprots and herryngs by his syde. 
And makes an end of Lenton tyde !" ^ 

In the reign of Elizabeth butchers were strictly enjoined 
not to sell fleshmeat in Lent, not with a religious view, but 
for the double purpose' of diminishing the consumption of 
fleshmeat during that period, and so making it more plenti- 
ful during the rest of the year, and of encouraging the fish- 
eries and augmenting the number of seamen. Butchers, 
however, who had an interest at court frequently obtained 
a dispensation to kill a certain number of beasts a week dur- 
ing Lent ; of which indulgence the wants of invalids, who 
could not subsist without animal food, was made the pre- 
tence. It is to this practice that Cade refers in " 2 Henry 
VI." (iv. 3), where he tells Dick, the butcher of Ashford : 
" Therefore, thus will I reward thee, — the Lent shall be as 

■ " Notes and Queries," ist series, vol. xii. p. 297. 

^ See Nares's " Glossary," vol. i. p. 443 ; Brand's " Pop. Antiq.," 1849, 
vol. i. p. loi. Taylor, the Water-Poet, has a tract entitled " Jack-a- 
Lent, his Beginning and Entertainment, with the mad Prankes of 
Gentlemen-Usher, Shrove Tuesday." 

= Singer's " Shakespeare," vol. vi. p. 219. 



CUSTOMS CONNECTED WITH THE CALENDAR. 30 1 

long- again as it is ; and thou shalt have a h'cense to kill for a 
hundred lacking one." 

In " 2 Henry IV." (ii. 4), Falstaff mentions an indictment 
against Hostess Quickly, "■ for suffering flesh to be eaten in 
thy house, contrary to the law ; for the which I think thou 
wilt howl." Whereupon she replies, " All victuallers do so : 
what's a joint of mutton or two in a whole Lent ?" 

The sparing fare in olden days, during Lent, is indirectly 
referred to by Rosencrantz in " Hamlet" (ii. 2) : " To think, 
my lord, if you delight not in man, what lenten entertain- 
ment the players shall receive." We may compare, too, 
Maria's words in "Twelfth Night" (i. 5), where she speaks 
of a good lenten answer, t. c, short. 

By a scrap of proverbial rhyme quoted by Mercutio in 
"Romeo and Juliet" (ii. 4), and the speech introducing it, 
it appears that a stale hare might be used to make a pie in 
Lent ; he says : 

" No hare, sir: unless a hare, sir, in a lenten pic, that is something 
stale and hoar ere it be spent. 

An old hare hoar, 
And an old hare hoar, 
Is very good meat in Lent," etc. 

Scainhling days. The days so called were Mondays and 
Saturdays in Lent, when no regular meals were provided, 
and our great families scambled. There may possibly be an 
indirect allusion to this custom in " Henry V." (v. 2), where 
Shakespeare makes King Henry say: " If ever thou beest 
mine, Kate, as I have a saving faith within me tells me 
thou shalt, I get thee with scambling." In the old household 
book of the fifth Earl of Northumberland there is a partic- 
ular section appointing the order of service for these days, 
and so regulating the licentious contentions of them. We 
may, also, compare another passage in the same play (i. i), 
where the Archbishop of Canterbury speaks of" the scam- 
bling and unquiet time." 

Good Friday. Beyond the bare allusion to this day, Shake- 
speare makes no reference to the many observances formerly 



302 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



associated with it. In " King John " (i. i) he makes PhiHp 
the Bastard say to Lady Faulconbridge : 

" Madam, I was not old Sir Robert's son : 
Sir Robert might have eat his part in me 
Upon Good Friday, and ne'er broke his fast." 

And, in " i Henry IV." (i. 2), Poins inquires: "Jack, how 
agrees the devil and thee about thy soul, that thou soldest 
him on Good Friday last, for a cup of Madeira and a cold 
capon's leg?" 

Easter. According to a popular superstition, it is consid- 
ered unlucky to omit wearing new clothes on Easter Day, 
to which Shakespeare no doubt alludes in " Romeo and Jut 
liet " (iii. i), when he makes Mcrcutio ask Benvolio whether 
he did " not fall out with a tailor for wearing his new doublet 
before Easter." In East Yorkshire, on Easter Eve, young 
folks go to the nearest rnarket-town to buy some new arti- 
cle of dress or personal adornment to wear for the first time 
on Easter Day, as otherwise they believe that birds — nota- 
bly rooks or "crakes" — will spoil their clothes.' In " Poor 
Robin's Almanac" we are told : 

" At Easter let your clothes be new, 
Or else be sure you will it rue." 

Some think that the custom of" clacking " at Easter — which 
is not quite obsolete in some counties — is incidentally allud- 
ed to in " Measure for Measure" (iii. 2) by Lucio : "his use 
was, to put a ducat in her clack-dish." " The clack or clap 
dish was a wooden dish with a movable cover, formerly 
carried by beggars, which they clacked and clattered to 
show that it was empty. In this they received the alms. 
Lepers and other paupers deemed infectious originally used 
it, that the sound might give Avarning not to approach too 
near, and alms be given without touching the person. 

A popular name for Easter Monday was Black Monday, 

' " Notes and Queries,'' 4th series, vol. v. p. 595 

"^ See Singer's " Shakespeare," vol. i. p. 362 ; Nares's " Glossary," vol. 
i. p. 164 ; Brand's " Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. iii. p. 94. 



CUSTOMS CONNECTED WITH THE CALENDAR. 303 

SO called, says Stow, because "in the 34th of Edward III. 
(1360), the 14th of April, and the morrow after Easter Day-, 
King Edward, with his host, lay before the city of Paris ; 
which day was full dark of mist and hail, and so bitter cold, 
that many men died on their horses' backs with the cold. 
Wherefore unto this day it hath been call'd the Blacke Mon- 
day." Thus, in the " Merchant of Venice " (ii. 5), Launcclot 
says, " it was not for nothing that my nose fell a-bleeding 
on Black Monday last at six o'clock i' the morning." 

SL David' s Day (March i ). This day is observed by the 
Welsh in honor of St. David, their patron saint, Avhen, as 
a sign of their patriotism, they wear a leek. Much doubt 
exists as to the origin of this custom. According to the 
Welsh, it is because St. David ordered his Britons to place 
leeks in their caps, that they might be distinguished from 
their Saxon foes. Shakespeare introduces the custom into 
his play of " Henry V." (iv. 7), where Fluellen, addressing 
the monarch, says : 

" Your grandfather of famous memory, an't please your majesty, 
and your great uncle Edward the Plack Prince of Wales, as I have 
read in the chronicles, fought a most pravc pattle here in France. 

A'. Hairy. They did, Fluellen. 

Flu. Your majesty says very true : if your majesties is remembered 
of it, the Welshmen did goot service in a garden where leeks did 
grow, wearing leeks in their Monmouth caps ; which, your majesty 
know, to this hour is an honourable padge of the service; and I do 
pelicve, your majesty takes no scorn to wear the leek upon Saint 
Tavy's day." 

It has been justly pointed out, however, that this allusion 
by Fluellen to the Welsh having worn the leek in battle 
under the Black Prince is not, as some Avriters suppose, 
wholly decisive of its having originated in the fields of 
Cressy, but rather shows that when Shakespeare wrote 
Welshmen wore leeks.' In the same play, too (iv. i), the 
well-remembered Flucllcn's enforcement of Pistol to cat 

'See Hone's "Every Day Book," vol. i. p. 318; "British Popular 

Customs," pp. 110-113. 



304 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



the leek he had ridiculed further establishes the wearing as 
a usage. Pistol says : 

"Tell him I'll knock his leek about his pate 
Upon Saint Davy's day." 

In days gone by this day was observed by royalty ; and 
in 1695 we read how William III. wore a leek on St. David's 
Day, " presented to him by his sergeant, Porter, who hath as 
perquisites all the wearing apparel his majestic had on that 
day, even to his sword." It appears that formerly, among 
other customs, a Welshman was burned in effigy upon " St. 
Tavy's Day," an allusion to which occurs in " Poor Robin's 
Almanack" for 1757: 

" But it would make a stranger laugh. 
To see th' English hang poor Tafif : 
A pair of breeches and a coat. 
Hat, shoes, and stockings, and what not, 
Are stuffed with hay, to represent 
The Cambrian hero thereby meant." 

St. Patrick" s Day (March 17). Shakespeare, in "Ham- 
let " (i. 5), makes the Danish prince swear by St. Patrick, on 
which Warburton remarks that the Avhole northern world 
had their learning from Ireland.' As Mr. Singer" observes, 
however, it is more probable that the poet seized the first 
popular imprecation that came to his mind, without regard- 
ing whether it suited the country or character of the person 
to whom he gave it. Some, again, have supposed that there 
is a reference here to St. Patrick's purgatory, but this does 
not seem probable. 

St. George s Day (April 23). St. George, the guardian 
saint of England, is often alluded to by Shakespeare. His 
festival, which was formerly celebrated by feasts of cities 
and corporations, is now almost passed over without notice. 
Thus, Bedford, in " i Henry VI." (i. i), speaks of keeping 
" our great Saint George's feast withal." " God and St. 
George " was once a common battle-cry, several references 

' St. Patrick rids Ireland of snakes ; see p. 257. 
" Singer's " Shakespeare," 1870, vol. ix. p. 168. 



CUSTOMS CONNECTED WITH THE CALENDAR. 



305 



to which occur in Shakespeare's plays. Thus, in " Henry 
V." (iii. i), the king says to his soldiers :' 

" Cry, God for Harry, England, and Saint George." 

Again, in " i Henry VI." (iv. 2), Talbot says : 

" God and Saint George, Talbot and England's right, 
Prosper our colours in this dangerous fight !" 

The following injunction, from an old act of war, concern- 
ing the use of St. George's name in onsets, is curious : *' Item, 
that all souldiers entering into battaile, assault, skirmi.sh, or 
other faction of armes, shall have for their common crye and 
word, 5/. George, forivarel, or, Upoji thevi, St. George, whereby 
the souldier is much comforted, and the enemie dismaied,by 
calling to minde the ancient valour of England, with which 
that name has so often been victorious.'"' 

The combat of this saint on horseback with a dragon has 
been very long established as a subject for sign-painting. 
In '' King John " (ii. i) Philip says: 

" Saint George, that swing'd the dragon, and e'er since 
Sits on his horseback at mine hostess' door." 

It is still a v^ery favorite sign. In London alone ^ there are 
said to be no less than sixty-six public-houses and taverns 
with the sign of St. George and the Dragon, not counting 
beer-houses and coffee-houses. 

May Day. The festival of May day has, from the earliest 
times, been most popular in this country, on account of its 
association with the joyous season of spring. It was for- 
merly celebrated with far greater enthusiasm than nowa- 
days, for Bourne tells us how the young people were in the 
habit of rising a little after midnight and walking to some 
neighboring wood, accompanied with music and the blow- 
ing of horns, where they broke down branches from the 

' Cf. "Henry V.," v. 2 ; "3 Henry VI.." ii. i, 2; "Taming of the 
Shrew," ii. i ; " Richard H.," i. 3. 
' Cited by Warton in a note on " Richard HI.," v. 3. 
' Hotten's " History of Sign-boards," 1866, 3d ed., p. 287. 

20 



3o6 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

trees, which, decorated with nosegays and garlands of flow- 
ers, were brought home soon after sunrise, and placed at 
their doors and windows. Shakespeare, alluding to this 
practice, informs us how eagerly it was looked forward to, 
and that it was impossible to make the people sleep on May 
morning. Thus, in " Henry VIII." (v. 4), it is said : 

" Pray, sir, be patient : 'tis as much impossible — 
Unless we sweep 'em from the door with cannons — 
To scatter 'em, as 'tis to make 'em sleep 
On May-day morning." 

Again, in "A Midsummer-Night's Dream" (i. i), Lysan- 
der, speaking of these May-day observances, says to Hermia: 

" If thou lov'st me, then, 
Steal forth thy father's house to-morrow night ; 
And in the wood, a league without the town, 
Where I did meet thee once with Helena, 
To do observance to a morn of Ma5^ 
There will I stay for thee." 



And Theseus says (iv. i): 



" No doubt they rose up early to observe 
The rite of May." ' 



^ 



In the " Two Noble Kinsmen " (ii. 3), one of the four coun 
trymen asks: "Do we all hold against the Maying?" 

In Chaucer's " Court of Love " we read that early on 
May day " Fourth goth al the Court, both most and lest, to 
fetche the flowris fresh and blome." In the reign of Henry 
VIII. it is on record that the heads of the corporation of 
London went out into the high grounds of Kent to gather 
the May, and were met on Shooter's Hill by the king and 
his queen, Katherine of Arragon, as they were coming from 
the palace of Greenwich. Until within a comparatively re- 
cent period, this custom still lingered in some of the coun- 
ties. Thus, at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, the following doggerel 
was sung: 

' Cf. "Twelfth Night " (iii. 4) : " More matter for a May morning." 



CUSTOMS CONNECTED WITH THE CALENDAR. 307 

" Rise up, maidens, fie for shame ! 
For I've been four long miles from hame, 
I've been gathering my garlands gay, 
Rise up, fair maidens, and take in your May." 

Many of the ballads sung nowadays, in country places, 
by the village children, on May morning, as they carry their 
garlands from door to door, undoubtedly refer to the old 
practice of going a-Maying, although fallen into disuse. 

In olden times nearly every village had its May-pole, 
around which, decorated with wreaths of flowers, ribbons, 
and flags, our merry ancestors danced from morning till 
night. The earliest representation of an English May-pole 
is that published in the "Variorum Shakespeare," and de- 
picted on a window at Betley, in Staffordshire, then the 
property of Mr. Toilet, and which he was disposed to think 
as old as the time of Henry VIII. The pole is planted in a 
mound of earth, and has affixed to it St. George's red-cross 
banner and a white pennon or streamer with a forked end. 
The shaft of the pole is painted in a diagonal line of black 
colors upon a yellow ground, a characteristic decoration of 
all these ancient May-poles, as alluded to by Shakespeare 
in "A Midsummer-Night's Dream" (iii. 2), where it gives 
point to Hermia's allusion to her rival Helena as "a painted 
May-pole.'" The popularity of the May- pole in former 
centuries is shown by the fact that one of our London par- 
ishes, St. Andrew Undershaft, derives its name from the 
May-pole which overhung its steeple, a reference to which 
we find made by Geoffrey Chaucer, who, speaking of a vain 
boaster, says : 

" Right well aloft, and high ye bear your head. 
As ye would bear the great shaft of Cornhill." 

London, indeed, had several May-poles, one of which stood 
in Basing Lane, near St. Paul's Cathedral. It was a large fir 
pole, forty feet high and fifteen inches in diameter, and fabled 

' "Book of Days," vol. i. p. 575; see "British Popular Customs," 

pp. 228-230, 249. 



3o8 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



to be the justing staff of Gerard the Giant. Only a few, 
however, of the old May-poles remain scattered here and 
there throughout the country. One still supports a weather- 
cock in the churchyard at Pendleton, Manchester; and in 
Derbyshire, a few years ago, several were to be seen stand- 
ing on some of the village greens. The rhymes made use 
of as the people danced round the May-pole varied according 
to the locality, and oftentimes combined a curious mixture 
of the jocose and sacred. 

Another feature of the May-day festivities was the morris- 
dance, the principal characters of which generally were 
Robin Hood, Maid Marian, Scarlet, Stokesley, Little John, 
the Hobby-horse, the Bavian or Fool, Tom the Piper, with 
his pipe and tabor. The number of characters varied much 
at different times and places. In "All's Well that Ends 
Well " (ii. 2), the clown says : " As fit as ten groats is for the 
hand of an attorney ... a morris for May-day."* 

In " 2 Henry VI." (iii. i) the Duke of York says of Cade : 

" I have seen 
Him caper upright, like a wild Morisco, 
Shaking the bloody darts, as he his bells." 

In the " Two Noble Kinsmen" (iii. 5) Gerrold, the school- 
master, thus describes to King Theseus the morris-dance : 

" If you but favour, our country pastime made is. 
We are a few of those collected here, 
That ruder tongues distinguish villagers ; 
And, to say verity and not to fable. 
We are a merry rout, or else a rable, 
Or company, or, by a figure, choris. 
That 'fore thy dignity will dance a morris. 
And I, that am the rectifier of all, 
By title Pcrdagogiis, that let fall 
The bifch upon the breeches of the small ones, 
And humble with a ferula the tall ones. 
Do here present this machine, or this frame : 
And, dainty duke, whose doughty dismal fame, 

'See Brand's " Pop. Antiq.," vol. i. pp. 247-270; "Book of Days,' 
vol. i. pp. 630-633. 



CUSTOMS CONNECTED WITH THE CALENDAR. 309 

From Dis to Daedalus, from post to pillar, 

Is blown abroad, help me, thy poor well wilier, 

And, with thy twinkling eyes, look right and straight 

Upon this mighty morr — of mickle weight — 

Is — now comes in, which being glu'd together 

Makes morris, and the cause that we came hether. 

The body of our sport, of no small study. 

I first appear, though rude, and raw. and muddy. 

To speak, before thy noble grace, this tenner ; 

At whose great feet I offer up my penner : 

The next, the Lord of May and Lady bright. 

The chambermaid and serving-man, by night 

That seek out silent hanging: then mine host 

And his fat spouse, that welcomes to their cost 

The galled traveller, and with a beck'ning. 

Inform the tapster to inflame the reckoning : 

Then the beast-eating clown, and next the fool. 

The bavian, with long tail and eke long tool ; 

Cum multis altis that make a dance : 

Say 'Ay,' and all shall presently advance." 

Among the scattered allusions to the characters of this 
dance may be noticed that in " i Henry IV." (iii. 3): "and 
for womanhood, Maid Marian may be the deputy's wife of 
the ward to thee" — the allusion being to "the degraded 
Maid Marian of the later morris-dance, more male than fe- 
male." ' 

The "hobby-horse," another personage of the morris- 
dance on May day, was occasionally omitted, and appears to 
have given rise to a popular ballad, a line of which is given 
by " Hamlet" (iii. 2) : 

" For, O, for, O, the hobby-horse is forgot." 

This is quoted again in " Love's Labour's Lost " (iii. i). The 
hobby-horse was formed by a pasteboard horse's head, and 
a light frame made of wicker-work to join the hinder parts. 
This was fastened round the body of a man, and covered 
with a foot-cloth which nearly reached the ground, and con- 
cealed the legs of the performer, who displayed his antic 

' Nares's " Glossary,"' vol. ii. p. 550. 



310 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



equestrian skill, and performed various juggling tricks, to the 
amusement of the bystanders. In Sir Walter Scott's " Mon- 
astery" there is a spirited description of the hobby-horse. 
The term '• hobby-horse " was applied to a loose woman, 
and in the "Winter's Tale" (i. 2) it is so used by Leontes, 
who says to Camillo: 

" Then say 
My wife's a hobby-horse ; deserves a name 
As rank as any flax-wench, that puts to 
Before her troth-pHght." 

In "Othello" (iv. 1), Bianca, speaking of Desdemona's 
handkerchief, says to Cassio : " This is some minx's token, 
and I must take out the work ! There, give it your hobby- 
horse." It seems also to have denoted a silly fellow, as in 
" Much Ado About Nothing" (iii, 2), where it is so used by 
Benedick. 

Another character was Friar Tuck, the chaplain of Robin 
Hood, and as such is noticed in the " Two Gentlemen of 
Verona" (iv. i), where one of the outlaws swears: 

" By the bare scalp of Robin Hood's fat friar." 

He is also represented by Toilet as a Franciscan friar in 
the full clerical tonsure, for, as he adds, " When the parish 
priests were inhibited by the diocesan to assist in the May 
games, the Franciscans might give attendance, as being ex- 
empted from episcopal jurisdiction." ' 

It was no uncommon occurrence for metrical interludes 
of a comic species, and founded on the achievements of the 
outlaw Robin Hood, to be performed after the morris, on 
the May-pole green. Mr. Drake thinks that these interludes 
are alluded to in "Twelfth Night" (iii. 4), where Fabian ex- 
claims, on the approach of Sir Andrew Aguecheek with his 
challenge, " More matter for a May morning." 

Whit stmt ide. Apart from its observance as a religious 
festival, Whitsuntide was, in times past, celebrated with 
much ceremony. In the Catholic times of England it was 

' See Drake's " Shakespeare and his Times," 181 7, vol. i. p. 163. 



CUSTOMS CONNECTED ^YITH THE CALENDAR. -n 

usual to dramatize the descent of the Holy Ghost, which this 
festival commemorates — a custom which we find alluded 
to in Barnaby Googe's translation of Naogcorgiis : 

" On Whit-Sunday white pigeons tame in strings from heaven flie, 
And one that framed is of wood still hangeth in the skie, 
Thou seest how they with idols play, and teach the people too : 
None otherwise than little girls with puppets used to do." 

This custom appears to have been carried to an extrava- 
gant height in Spain, for Mr. Fosbroke ' tells us that the gift 
of the Holy Ghost was represented by " thunder from en- 
gines which did much damage." Water, oak leaves, burning 
torches, wafers, and cakes were thrown down from the church 
roof; pigeons and small birds, with cakes tied to their legs, 
were let loose ; and a long censer was swung up and down. 
In our own country, many costly pageants were exhibited at 
this season. Thus, at Chester, the Whitsun Mysteries* were 
acted during the Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday in Whit- 
sun week. The performers were carried from one place to 
another by means of a scaffold — a huge and ponderous ma- 
chine mounted on wheels, gayly decorated with flags, and 
divided into two compartments — the upper of which formed 
the stage, and the lower, defended from vulgar curiosity by 
coarse canvas draperies, answered the purposes of a green- 
room. To each craft in the city a separate mystery was 
allotted. Thus, the drapers exhibited the "Creation," the 
tanners took the " Fall of Lucifer," the water-carriers of the 
Dee acted the " Deluge," etc. The production, too, of these 
pageants was extremely costly ; indeed, each one has been 
set down at fifteen or twenty pounds sterling. An allusion 
to this custom is made in the " Two Gentlemen of Verona " 
(iv. 4), where Julia says : 

" At Pentecost, 
When all our pageants of delight were play'd, 
Our youth got me to play the woman's part. 
And I was trimm'd in Madam Julia's gown." 

The morris-dance, too, was formerly a common accom- 



' '• Encyclopaedia of Antiquities," 1843, vol. ii. p. 653. 



312 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



paniment to the Whitsun ales, a practice which is still kept 
up in many parts of the country. In " Henry V." (ii. 4), 
the Dauphin thus alludes to it : 

" I say, 'tis meet we all go forth, 
To view the sick and feeble parts of France : 
And let us do it with no show of fear ; 
No, with no more than if we heard that England 
Were busied with a Whitsun morris-dance." 

And once more, in the " Winter's Tale " (iv. 4), Perdita says 
to Florizel : 

" Methinks I play as I have seen them do 
In Whitsun pastorals." 

A custom formerly kept up in connection with Whitsun- 
tide was the " Whitsun ale." Ale was so prevalent a drink 
among us in olden times as to become a part of the name 
of various festal meetings, as Leet ale. Lamb ale, Bride ale 
(bridal), and, as we see, Whitsun ale. Thus our ancestors 
were in the habit of holding parochial meetings every Whit- 
suntide, usually in some barn near the church, consisting of 
a kind of picnic, as each parishioner brought what victuals 
he could spare. The ale, which had been brewed pretty 
strong for the occasion, was sold by the churchwardens, and 
from its profits a fund arose for the repair of the church.' 
These meetings are referred to by Shakespeare in " Pericles" 

(i.i): 

" It hath been sung at festivals. 
On ember-eves and holy-ales." 

In the '• Two Gentlemen of Verona " (ii. 5), when Launce 
tells Speed, " thou hast not so much charity in thee as to go 
to the ale with a Christian," these words have been explained 
to. mean the rural festival so named, though, as Mr. Dyce 
remarks (" Glossary," p. 10), the previous words of Launce, 
" go with me to the ale-house," show this explanation to be 
wronsf. 



I 



* See " British Popular Customs," p. 278 ; Brand's " Pop. Antiq.," 
1849, vol. i. p. 276. 



CUSTOMS CONNECTED WITH THE CALENDAR. 



313 



In the old miracle-plays performed at this and other sea- 
sons Herod was a favorite personage, and was generally rep- 
resented as a tyrant of a very overbearing, violent character. 
Thus Hamlet says (iii. 2): " O, it offends me to the soul, to 
hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tat- 
ters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings ; who, 
for the most part, are capable of nothing but inexplicable 
dumb-shows and noise : I would have such a fellow whipped 
for o'er-doing Termagant ; it out-herods Herod." On this 
account Alexas mentions him as the most daring charac- 
ter when he tells Cleopatra ( " Antony and Cleopatra," 
iii. 3): 

" Good majesty, 

Herod of Jewry dare net look upon you 

But when you are well pleas'd." 

In the " Merry Wives of Windsor" (ii. i), Mrs. Page speaks 
of him in the same signification : " What a Herod of Jewry 
is this !" 

Mr. Dyce, in his " Glossary" (p. 207), has this note: " If 
the reader wishes to know what a swaggering, uproarious 
t3'rant Herod was represented to be in those old dramatic 
performances, let him turn to 'Magnus Herodes' in 'The 
Towneley Mysteries,' p. 140, ed. Surtees Society ; to ' King 
Herod' in the ' Coventry Mysteries,' p. 188, ed. Shakespeare 
Society; and to 'The Slaughter of the Innocents' in 'The 
Chester Plays,' vol. i. p. 172, ed. Shakespeare Society." 

Like Herod, Termagant' was a hectoring tyrant of the 
miracle-plays, and as such is mentioned by Hamlet in the 
passage quoted above. Hence, in course of time, the word 
was used as an adjective, in the sense of violent, as in " i 
Henry IV." (v. 4), " that hot termagant Scot." Hall men- 
tions him in his first satire: 

" Nor fright the reader with the Pagan vaunt 
Of mighty Mahound and great Termagaunt." 



' According to the crusaders and the old romance writers a Saracen 
deity. See Singer's " Shakespeare," vol. ix. p. 214. 



314 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



1 

3 we « ' 




While speaking of the old mysteries or miracle-plays we 
may also here refer to the " moralities," a class of religious 
plays in which allegorical personifications of the virtues and 
vices were introduced as dramatis pcrsoncc. These personages 
at first only took part in the play along with the Scriptural 
or legendary characters, but afterwards entirely superseded 
them. They continued in fashion till the time of Queen 
Elizabeth. Several allusions are given by Shakespeare to 
these moral plays. Thus, in "Twelfth Night" (iv. i), the 
clown sings : 

" I am gone, sir. 
And anon, sir, 
I'll be with you again 
In a trice. 

Like to the old Vice, 
Your need to sustain ; 

Who, with dagger of lath, 
In his rage and his wrath. 
Cries, Ah, ha ! to the devil," etc. 

Again, in " i Henry IV." (ii. 4), Prince Henry speaks of 
*' that reverend Vice, that grey Iniquity ;" and in " 2 Henry 
IV." (iii. 2), Falstaff says, " now is this Vice's dagger become 
a squire." 

Again, further allusions occur in "Richard III." (iii. i ). 
Gloster says : 

" Thus, like the formal Vice, Iniquity, 
I moralize two meanings in one word." 

And once more, Hamlet (iii. 4), speaks of" a Vice of kings," 
" a king of shreds and patches." 

According to Nares, "Vice" had the name sometimes of 
one vice, sometimes of another, but most commonly of In- 
iquity, or Vice itself. He was grotesquely dressed in a cap 
with ass's ears, a long coat, and a dagger of lath. One of 
his chief employments was to make sport with the devil, 
leaping on his back, and belaboring him with his dagger of 
lath, till he made him roar. The devil, however, always car- 
ried him off in the end. He was, in short, the buffoon of 



CUSTOMS CONNECTED WITH THE CALENDAR. 315 

the morality, and was succeeded in his office by the clown, 
whom we see in Shakespeare and others.' 

Again, there may be a further allusion to the moralities 
in "King Lear" (ii. 2), where Kent says to Oswald, " take 
Vanity, the puppet's, part, against the royalty of her father." 

Then, too, there were the " pageants " — shows which were 
usually performed in the highways of our towns, and assimi- 
lated in some degree to the miracle-plays, but were of a more 
mixed character, being partly drawn from profane history. 
According to Strutt, they were more frequent in London, 
being required at stated periods, such as the setting of the 
Midsummer Watch, and the Lord Mayor's Show.^ Among 
the allusions to these shows given by Shakespeare, we may 
quote one in "Richard IIL" (iv. 4), where Queen Margaret 
speaks of 

"The flattering index of a direful pageant" 

— the pageants displayed on public occasions being generally 
preceded by a brief account of the order in which the char- 
acters were to walk. These indexes were distributed among 
the spectators, that they might understand the meaning of 
such allegorical representations as were usually exhibited. 
Li the "Merchant of Venice" (i. i), Salarino calls argosies 
" the pageants of the sea," in allusion, says Douce, ° " to those 
enormous machines, in the shapes of castles, dragons, ships, 
giants, etc., that were drawn about the streets in the ancient 
shows or pageants, and which often constituted the most 
important part of them." Again, in "As You Like It" 
(iii. 4), Corin says : 

" If you will see a pageant truly play'd, 
Between the pale complexion of true love 
And the red glow of scorn and proud disdain, 
Go hence a little, and I shall conduct you. 
If you will mark it." 

' See Dyce's " Glossary," p. 482. 

^ " Sports and Pastimes." 1876, pp. 25-28 ; sec Warton's " History of 
English Poetry," vol. ii. p. 202. 
' " Illustrations of Shakespeare," p. 154- 



3i6 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



And in " Antony and Cleopatra" (iv. 14), Antony speaks of 
" black vesper's pageants." 

The nine worthies, originally comprising Joshua, David, 
Judas Maccabaeus, Hector, Alexander, Julius Caesar, Arthur, 
Charlemagne, and Godfrey of Bouillon, appear from a very 
early period to have been introduced occasionally in the 
shows and pageants of our ancestors. Thus, in " Love's 
Labour's Lost " (v. 2), the pageant of the nine worthies is 
introduced. As Shakespeare, however, introduces Hercules 
and Pompey among his presence of worthies, we may infer 
that the characters were sometimes varied to suit the cir- 
cumstances of the period, or the taste of the auditory. A 
MS. preserved in the library of Trinity College, Dublin, 
mentions the "Six Worthies" having been played before 
the Lord Deputy Sussex in 1557.' 

Another feature of the Whitsun merrymakings were the 
Cotswold games, which were generally on the Thursday in 
Whitsun week, in the vicinity of Chipping Campden. They 
were instituted by an attorney of Burton-on-the-Heath, in 
Warwickshire, named Robert Dover, and, like the Olympic 
games of the ancients, consisted of most kinds of manly 
sports, such as wrestling, leaping, pitching the bar, handling 
the pike, dancing, and hunting. Ben Jonson, Drayton, and 
other poets of that age wrote verses on this festivity, which, 
in 1636, were collected into one volume, and published un- 
der the name of " Annalia Dubrensia.'"^ In the "Merry 
Wives of Windsor" (i. i). Slender asks Page, "How does 
your fallow gre5diound, sir? I heard say, he was outrun on 
Cotsall." And in " 2 Henry IV."'(iii. 2), Shallow, by distin- 
guishing Will Squele as " a Cotswold man," meant to imply 
that he was well versed in manly exercises, and consequently 
of a daring spirit and athletic constitution. A sheep was 
jocularly called a " Cotsold," or "Cotswold lion," from the 
extensive pastures in that part of Gloucestershire. 

' Staunton's " Shakespeare," 1864, vol. i. pp. 147, 148. 

'' See " Book of Days," vol. i. p. 712. 

^ See Singer's " Shakespeare," vol. v. p. 206. 



CUSTOMS CONNECTED WITH THE CALENDAR. 317 

While speaking of Whitsuntide festivities, we may refer 
to the " roasted Manningtree ox with the pudding in his 
belly," to which Prince Henry alludes in " i Henry IV." 
(ii. 4). It appears that Manningtree, in Essex, formerly en- 
joyed the privilege of fairs, by the tenure of exhibiting a 
certain number of Stage Plays yearly. There were, also, 
great festivities there, and much good eating, at Whitsun 
ales and other times. Hence, it seems that roasting an ox 
whole was not uncommon on such occasions. The pudding 
spoken of by Prince Henry often accompanied the ox, as 
we find in a ballad written in 1658:' 

" Just so the people stare 
At an ox in the fair 
Roasted whole with a pudding in 's belly." 

Shccp-sJiearing Time commences as soon as the warm 
weather is so far settled that the sheep may, without dan- 
ger, lay aside their winter clothing; the following tokens 
being laid down by Dyer, in his " Fleece " (bk. i), to mark 
out the proper time:^ 

" If verdant elder spreads 
Her silver flowers ; if humble daisies yield 
To yellow crowfoot and luxuriant grass 
Gay shearing-time approaches." 

Our ancestors, who took advantage of every natural holiday, 
to keep it long and gladly, celebrated the time of sheep- 
shearing by a feast exclusively rural. Drayton,' the coun- 
tryman of Shakespeare, has graphically described this fes- 
tive scene, the Vale of Evesham being the locality of the 
sheep-shearing which he has pictured so pleasantly : 

"The shepherd king. 
Whose flock hathchanc'd that year the earliest lamb to bring, 

' See Nichol's " Collection of Poems," 1780, vol. iii. p. 204, 
" See Knight's " Life of Shakespeare," 1845, p. 71 ; Howitt's " Picto- 
rial Calendar of the Seasons," 1854, pp. 254-267. 

* " Polyolbion," song 14; see Brand's ''Pop. Antiq.," 1849, ^'o'- ''• 
p. 34; Timbs's "A Garland for the Year," pp. 74- 75- 



3i8 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

In his gay baldric sits at his low, grassy board, 

With flawns, curds, clouted cream, and country dainties stored ; 

And whilst the bag-pipe plays, each lusty, jocund swain 

Quaffs syllabubs in cans, to all upon the plain, 

And to their country girls, whose nosegays they do wear ; 

Some roundelays do sing ; the rest the burthen bear." 

In the "Winter's Tale," one of the most dehcious scenes 
(iv. 4) is that of the sheep-shearing, in which we have the 
more poetical "shepherd-queen." Mr. Furnivall,' in his 
introduction to this play, justly remarks: " How happily it 
brings Shakespeare before us, mixing with his Stratford 
neighbors at their sheep-shearing and country sports, en- 
joying the vagabond pedler's gammon and talk, delighting 
in the sweet Warwickshire maidens, and buying them ' fair- 
ings,' telling goblin stories to the boys, ' There was a man 
dwelt in a churchyard,' opening his heart afresh to all the 
innocent mirth, and the beauty of nature around him." 
The expense attaching to these festivities appears to have 
afforded matter of complaint. Thus, the clown asks, "What 
am I to buy for our sheep-shearing feast?" and then pro- 
ceeds to enumerate various things which he will have to 
purchase. In Tusser's " Five Hundred Points of Husbandry" 
this festival is described under " The Ploughman's Feast- 
days :" 

" Wife, make us a dinner, spare flesh neither corne. 
Make wafers and cakes, for our sheep must be shorne ; 
At sheepe-shearing, neighbours none other things crave, 
But good cheere and welcome like neighbours to have." 

Midsununcr Eve appears to have been regarded as a pe- 
riod when the imagination ran riot, and many a curious 
superstition was associated with this season. Thus, people 
gathered on this night the rose, St. John's wort, vervain, 
trefoil, and rue, all of which were supposed to have magical 
properties. They set the orpine in clay upon pieces of 
slate or potsherd in their houses, calling it a " Midsummer 
man." As the stalk was found next morning to incline to 

' Introduction to the " Leopold Shakespeare," p. xci. 



CUSTOMS CONNECTED WITH THE CALENDAR. 



319 



the right or left, the anxious maiden knew whether her lover 
would prove true to her or not. Young men sought, also, 
for pieces of coal, but, in reality, certain hard, black, dead 
roots, often found under the living mugwort, designing to 
place these under their pillows, that they might dream of 
themselves.* It was also supposed that any person fasting 
on Midsummer-eve, and sitting in the church-porch, would 
at midnight see the spirits of those persons of that parish 
who would die that year come and knock at the church- 
door, in the order and succession in which they would die. 
Midsummer was formerly thought to be a season productive 
of madness. Thus, Malvolio's strange conduct is described 
by Olivia in " Twelfth Night " (iii. 4) as " A very midsummer 
madness." And, hence, "A Midsummer-Night's Dream" 
is no inappropriate title for " the series of wild incongruities 
of which the play consists."' The Low-Dutch have a prov- 
erb that, when men have passed a troublesome night, and 
could not sleep, " they have passed St. John Baptist's night " 
— that is, they have not taken any sleep, but watched all 
night. Heywood seems to allude to a similar notion when 
he says : 

" As mad as a March hare : where madness compares, 
Are not midsummer hares as mad as March hares?" 

A proverbial phrase, too, to signif}' that a person was mad, 
was, " 'Tis midsummer moon with )-ou " — hot weather being 
supposed to affect the brain. 

Dog-days. A popular superstition — in all probability de- 
rived from the Egyptians — referred to the rising and setting 
of Sirius, or the Dog-star, as infusing madness into the canine 
race. Consequently, the name of " Dog-days " was given by 
the Romans to the period between the 3d of July and i ith 
of August, to which Shakespeare alludes in " Henry VIII." 
(v. 3), " the dog-days now reign." It is obvious that the 



• " Book of Days."' vol. i. p. 816; sec Brand's " Pop. Antiq.," vol. i. 
p. 314 ; Soane's " Book of the Months." 

' See Brand's " Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. i. pp. 336. 337. 



320 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



notion is utterly groundless, for not only does the star vary 
in its rising, but is later and later every year. According 
to the Roman belief, " at the rising of the Dog-star the seas 
boil, the wines ferment in the cellars, and standing waters 
are set in motion ; the dogs, also, go mad, and the sturgeon ■ 
is blasted." The term Dog-days is still a common phrase, 
and it is difficult to say whether it is from superstitious ad- 
herence to old custom or from a belief of the injurious effect 
of heat upon the canine race that the magistrates, often un- 
wisely, at this season of the year order them to be muzzled 
or tied up. 

Laviiiias-day (August i). According to some antiquari- 
ans, Lammas is a corruption of loaf-mass, as our ancestors 
made an offering of bread from new wheat on this day. 
Others derive it from lamb-mass, because the tenants who 
held lands under the Cathedral Church of York were bound 
by their tenure to bring a live lamb into the church at high 
mass." It appears to have been a popular day in times past, 
and is mentioned in the following dialogue in " Romeo and 
Juliet" (i. 3), where the Nurse inquires: 

" How long is it now 
To Lammas-tide ? 

Lady Capulet. A fortnight, and odd days. 

Nurse. Even or odd. of all days in the year. 
Come Lammas-eve at night, shall she be fourteen ?" 

In Neale's "Essays on Liturgiology " (2d. ed., p. 526), 
the Welsh equivalent for Lammas-day is given as " dydd 
degwm wyn," lamb-tithing day. 

St. CJiarity (August i). This saint is found in the Mar- 
tyrology on the ist of August : " Romae passio Sanctaram 
Virginum Fidei, Spei, et Charitatis, quae sub Hadriano prin- 
cipe martyriae coronam adeptae sunt."° She is alluded to 
by Ophelia, in her song in " Hamlet " (iv. 5) : 

' See " British Popular Customs," pp. 347-351. 
* Douglas's " Criterion," p. 68, cited by Ritson ; see Douce's " Illus- 
trations of Shakespeare," p. 475. 



CUSTOMS CONNECTED WITH THE CALENDAR. -^21 

" By Gis,' and by Saint Charity, 
Alack, and tic for shame !" etc. 

In the " Faire Maide of Bristowe " (1605) we find a simi- 
lar allusion : 

" Now, by Saint Charity, if I were judge, 
A halter were the least should hamper him." 

St. BartJiolomcii/s Day (August 24). The anniversary of 
this festival was formerly signalized by the holding of the 
great Smithfield Fair, the only real fair held within the city 
of London. One of the chief attractions of Bartholomew 
Fair were roasted pigs. They were sold " piping hot, in 
booths and on stalls, and ostentatiously displayed to excite 
the appetite of passengers." Hence, a " Bartholomew pig" 
became a popular subject of allusion. Falstaff, in " 2 Henry 
IV." (ii.4),in coaxing ridicule of his enormous figure, is play- 
fully called, by his favorite Doll : " Thou whoreson little tidy 
Bartholomew boar -pig." Dr, Johnson, however, thought 
that paste pigs were meant in this passage ; but this is im- 
probable, as the true Bartholomew pigs were real roasted 
pigs, as may be seen from Ben Jonson's play of " Barthol- 
omew Fair" (i. 6), Avhere Ursula, the pig-woman, is an im- 
portant personage.^ Gay, too, speaks of the pig-dressers: 
"Like Bartholomew Fair pig -dressers, who look like the 
dams, as well as the cooks, of what they roasted." A fur- 
ther allusion to this season is found in " Henry V." (v. 2), 
where Burgundy tells how "maids, well -summered and 
warm kept, are like flies at Bartholomew-tide, blind, though 
they have their eyes; and then they will endure handling, 
which before would not abide looking on." 

Harvest Home. The ceremonies which graced the ingath- 
ering of the harvest in bygone times have gradually dis- 
appeared, and at the present day only remnants of the old 



* This is, perhaps, a corrupt abbreviation of " By Jesus." Some 
would read " By Cis," and understand by it " St. Cicely." 

■■' See Nares's " Glossary," vol. i. p. 57 ; Morlcy's " Memoirs of Bar- 
tholomew Fair," 1859. 

21 



322 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 




usages which once prevailed are still preserved. Shake 
speare, who has chronicled so many of our old customs, an4l 
seems to have had a special delight in illustrating his writ 
ings with these characteristics of our social life, has given 
several interesting allusions to the observances which, in his 
day, graced the harvest-field. Thus, in Warwickshire, the 
laborers, at their harvest-home, appointed a judge to try 
misdemeanors committed during harvest, and those who 
were sentenced to punishment were placed on a bench and 
beaten with a pair of boots. Hence the ceremony was called 
"giving them the boots." It has been suggested that this 
custom is alluded to in the "Two Gentlemen of Verona " 
(i. i), where Shakespeare makes Proteus, parrying Valentine's 
raillery, say, " nay, give me not the boots." 

In Northamptonshire, when any one misconducted him- 
self in the field during harvest, he was subjected to a mock- 
trial at the harvest-home feast, and condemned to be booted, 
a description of which we find in the introduction to Clare's 
" Village Minstrel:" " A long form is placed in the kitchen, 
upon which the boys who have worked well sit, as a terror 
and disgrace to the rest, in a bent posture, with their hands 
laid on each other's backs, forming a bridge for the 'hogs' 
(as the truant boys are called) to pass over; while a strong 
chap stands on each side with a boot-legging, soundly strap- 
ping them as they scuffle over the bridge, which is done as 
fast as their ingenuity can carry them." Some, however, 
think the allusion in the "Two Gentlemen of Verona" is 
to the diabolical torture of the boot. Not a great while be- 
fore this play was written, it had been inflicted, says Douce,' 
in the presence of King James, on one Dr. Fian, a supposed 
wizard, who was charged with raising the storms that the 
kins' encountered in his return from Denmark. The unfort- 
unate man was afterwards burned. This horrible torture, 
we are told,^ consisted in the leg and knee of the criminal 

1 " Illustrations of Shakespeare," p. 21. 

- Dyce's " Glossary," p. 47 ; Douce has given a representation of this 
instrument of torture from Milloeus's " Praxis Criminis Persequendi," 
Paris, 1 541. 



I 



CUSTOMS CONNECTED WITH THE CALENDAR. 323 

being enclosed within a tight iron boot or case, wedges of 
iron being then driven in with a mallet between the knee 
and the iron boot. Sir Walter Scott, in " Old Mortality," 
has given a description of Macbriar undergoing this punish- 
ment. At a later period " the boot " signified, according to 
Nares,' an instrument for tightening the leg or hand, and 
was used as a cure for the gout, and called a " bootikins." 
The phrase "to give the boots" seems to have been a pro- 
verbial expression, signifying " Don't make a laughing-stock 
of me ; don't play upon me." 

In the " Merchant of Venice" (v. i), where Lorenzo says: 

" Come, ho ! and wake Diana with a hymn : 
With sweetest touches pierce your mistress' ear, 
And draw her home with music," 

we have, doubtless, an allusion to the " Hock Cart " of the 
old harvest-home. This was the cart which carried the last 
corn away from the harvest-field," and was generally pro- 
fusely decorated, and accompanied by music, old and young 
shouting at the top of their voices a doggerel after the fol- 
lowing fashion : 

" We have ploughed, we have sowed. 

We have reaped, we have mowed. 

We have brought home every load, 

Hip, hip, hip ! harvest home.'' ' 

In " Poor Robin's Almanack" for August, 1676, we read: 

" Hoacky is brought home with hallowing, 
Boys with plumb-cake the cart following." 

Holyrood Day (September 14). This festival,^ called also 

' " Glossary," vol. i. p. 95. 
- Cf. " I Henry IV." (i. 3) : 

" His chin, new reap'd, 
Show'd like a stubble-land at harvest-home." 

' See Brand's " Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. ii. pp. 16-33. 
* See " British Popular Customs,'' pp. 372, 373. In Lincolnshire this 
day is called " Hally-Loo Day." 



324 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



II 



Holy-Cross Day, was instituted by the Romish Church, on 
account of the recovery of a large piece of the supposed 
cross by the Emperor Heraclius, after it had been taken 
away, on the plundering of Jerusalem, by Chosroes, king of 
Persia. Among the customs associated with this day was 
one of going a-nutting, alluded to in the old play of " Grim, 
the Collier of Croydon " (ii. i) : 

" To-morrow is Holy-rood day. 
When all a-nutting take their way." 

Shakespeare mentions this festival in " i Henry IV." (i. i), 
where he represents the Earl of Westmoreland relating how, 

" On Holy-rood day, the gallant Hotspur there, 
Young Harry Percy and brave Archibald, 
That ever-valiant and approved Scot, 
At Holmcdon met.'' 

St. Lainhcrfs Day (September 17). This saint, whose 
original name was Landebert, but contracted into Lambert, 
was a native of Maestricht, in the seventh century, and was 
assassinated early in the eighth.' His festival is alluded to 
in " Richard H." (i. 1), where the king says: 

" Be ready, as your lives shall answer it. 
At Coventry, upon Saint Lambert's day." 

Michaelmas (September 29). In the " Merry Wives of 
Windsor" (i. i), this festival is alluded to by Simple, Avho, 
in answer to Slender, whether he had " the Book of riddles" 
about him, replies : " Why, did you not lend it to Alice 
Shortcake upon All-hallowmas last, a fortnight afore Mi- 
chaelmas," — this doubtless being an intended blunder. 

In " I Henry IV." (ii. 4), Francis says: "Let me see — 
about Michaelmas next I shall be." 

St. EtJicldrcda, or Andry, commemorated in the Romish 
Calendar on the 23d of June, but in the English Calendar on 
the 17th of October, was daughter of Annas, King of the 
East Angles. She founded the convent and church of Ely, 

' See Butler's " Lives of the Saints." 



CUSTOMS CONNECTED WITH THE CALENDAR. 



325 



on the spot where the cathedral was subsequently erected. 
Formerly, at Ely, a fair was annually held, called in her 
memory St. Audry's Fair, at which much cheap lace was 
sold to the poorer classes, which at first went by the name 
of St. Audry's lace, but in time was corrupted into " tawdry 
lace." Shakespeare makes an allusion to this lace in the 
"Winter's Tale" ( iv. 4), where Mopsa says: "Come, you 
promised me a tawdry lace, and a pair of sweet gloves;" 
although in his time the expression rather meant a rustic 
necklace.' An old English historian makes St. Audry die 
of a swelling in her throat, which she considered as a par- 
ticular judgment for having been in her youth addicted to 
wearing fine necklaces.^ 

5/. Crispitis Day (October 25) has for centuries been a 
red-letter day in the calendar of the shoemakers, being the 
festival of their patron saint. According to tradition, the 
brothers Crispin and Crispinian, natives of Rome, having 
become converted to Christianity, travelled to Soissons, in 
France, in order to preach the gospel. Being desirous, how- 
ever, of rendering themselves independent, they earned their 
daily bread by making shoes, with which, it is said, they 
furnished the poor, at an extremely low price. When the 
governor of the town discovered that they maintained the 
Christian faith, and also tried to make proselytes of the in- 
habitants, he ordered them to be beheaded- From this time 
the shoemakers have chosen them for their tutelary saints. 
Shakespeare has perpetuated the memory of this festival by 
the speech which he has given to Henry V. (iv. 3), before 
the battle of Agincourt: 

" Tills day is call'd the feast of Crispian : 
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home, 
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam'd. 
And rouse him at the name of Crispian, 
He that shall live this day, and sec old age. 
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours. 
And say, ' To-morrow is Saint Crispian.' " 

' See Nares's " Glossary," vol. ii. p. 868 ; Brady's "Clavis Calendaria." 
"^ Nich. Harpsfield, " Hist, Eccl. Anglicana," p. Z(). 



326 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

St. Dennis has been adopted as the patron saint of France 
(October 9), in the same manner as the EngHsh have chosen 
St. George. The guardianship of the two countries is thus 
expressed in the chorus to the old ballad : 

" St. George he was for England, 
St. Denis was for France, 
Singing, Honi soit qui mal y pense." 

King Henry (" Henry V.," v. 2) says to Princess Kathe- 
rine : " Shall not thou and I, between Saint Dennis and 
Saint George, compound a boy, half French, half English," 
etc. In " I Henry VI." (iii. 2), Charles says : 

" Saint Dennis bless this happy stratagem, 
And once again we'll sleep secure in Rouen." 

Halloivmas (November i) is one of the names for the feast 
of All-hallows, that is, All-Saints. Shakespeare alludes to a 
custom relative to this day, some traces of which are still to 
be found in Staffordshire, Cheshire, and other counties. The 
poor people go from parish to parish a-soiiling, as they term 
it, that is, begging, in a certain lamentable tone, for soul- 
cakes, at the same time singing a song which they call the 
souler's song. This practice is, no doubt, a remnant of the 
Popish ceremony of praying for departed souls, especially 
those of friends, on the ensuing day, Novem.ber 2, the feast 
of All-Souls.' The following is a specimen of the doggerel 
sung on these occasions : 

" Soul ! soul ! for a soul-cake ; 
Pray, good mistress, for a soul-cake. 
One for Peter, and two for Paul, 
Three for them who made us all. 

Soul ! soul ! for an apple or two ; 
If you've got no apples, pears will do. 
Up with your kettle, and down with your pan. 
Give me a good big one, and I'll be gone. 
Soul ! soul ! for a soul-cake, etc. 

An apple, a pear, a plum, or a cherry, 
Is a very good thing to make us merry." 



See " British Popular Customs," p. 404. 



CUSTOMS CONNECTED WITH THE CALENDAR. 327 

In the " Two Gentlemen of Verona" (ii. i), Speed thus 
speaks of this practice : " To watch, like one that fears rob- 
bing ; to speak puling,' like a beggar at Hallowmas." 

The season of Hallowmas, having been frequently mild, has 
been, from time immemorial, proverbially called " All-hallovvn 
summer," i.e., late summer. Thus, in " i Henry IV." (i. 2), 
Prince Henry, likening Falstaff, with his old age and young 
passions, to this November summer, addresses him : " Fare- 
well, thou latter spring! Farewell, All-hallown summer."' 
In some parts of Germany there is a proverb, "All-Saints' 
Day brings the second summer;" and in Sweden there is 
often about this time a continuance of warm, still weather, 
which is called " the All-Saints' rest." 

There is another reference to this festival in " Richard II." 
(v. i), where the king says of his wife : 

" She came adorned hither Hke sweet May, 
Sent back like Hallowmas or short'st of day." 

All-Souls' Day (November 2) — which is set apart by the 
Roman Catholic Church for a solemn service for the repose 
of the dead — was formerly observed in this country, and 
among the many customs celebrated in its honor were ring- 
ing the passing bell, making soul-cakes, blessing beans, etc.'' 
In " Richard III." (v. i), Buckingham, when led to execu- 
tion, sa}'s : 

" This is All-Souls' day, fellows, is it not ? 
Sheriff. It is, my lord. 
Bucking Iiaiii. Why, then, All-Souls' day is my body's doomsda\\" 

Lord-Mayor s Day (November 9). A custom which was 
in days gone by observed at the inauguration dinner was that 
of the Lord Mayor's fool leaping, clothes and all, into a large 
bowl of custard. It is alluded to in " All's Well that Ends 
Well" (ii. 5), by Lafeu : " You have made shift to run into 't, 
boots and spurs and all, like him that leaped into the cus- 

' Puling, or singing small, as Bailey explains the word. 
^ See Swainson's " Weather- Lore," 1873, pp. 141-143. 
* See " British Popular Customs," p. 409. 



228 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

tard." Ben Jonson, in his " Devil's an Ass " (i. i), thus refers 

to it: 

" He may, perchance, in tail of a sheriff's dinner, 
Skip with a rime o' the table, from new nothing, 
And take his almain leap into a custard, 
Shall make my lady mayoress and her sisters, 
Laugh all-their hoods over their shoulders." 

St. Martins Day (November 1 1 ). The mild weather 
about this time has given rise to numerous proverbs ; one 
of the well-known ones being " St. Martin's little summer," 
an allusion to which we find in " i Henry VI." (i. 2), where 
Joan of Arc says : 

" Expect Saint Martin's summer, halcyon days." 

which Johnson paraphrases thus: " Expect prosperity after 
misfortune, like fair weather at Martlemas, after winter has 
begun." As an illustration, too, of this passage, we may 
quote from the Tihics, October 6, 1864 : " It was one of those 
rare but lovely exceptions to a cold season, called in the 
Mediterranean St. Martin's summer." 

A corruption of Martinmas is Martlemas. Falstaff is jocu- 
larly so called by Poins, in " 2 Henry IV." (ii. 2), as being in 
the decline, as the year is at this season : " And how doth 
the martlemas, your master?" 

This was the customary time for hanging up provisions to 
dry, which had been salted for winter use. 

St. Nicholas (December 6). This saint was deemed the 
patron of children in general, but more particularly of all 
schoolboys, among whom his festival used to be a very great 
holiday. Various reasons have been assigned for his having 
been chosen as the patron of children — either because the 
legend makes him to have been a bishop Avhile yet a boy, 
or from his having restored three young scholars to life who 
had been cruelly murdered,' or, again, on account of his early 

' See Douce's "Illustrations of Shakespeare," p. 25 ; "The Church 
of Our Fathers," by D. Rock, 1853, vol. iii. p. 215 ; Gent. Mag., '^777, 
vol. xliii. p. 158 ; see Nares's " Glossary," vol. ii. pp. 601, 602 ; Brady's 
" Clavis Calendaria." 



CUSTOMS CONNECTED WITH THE CALENDAR. 329 

abstinence when a boy. In the " Two Gentlemen of Verona " 
(iii. i) he is alkided to in this capacity: 

" Speed. Come, fool, come ; try me in thy paper. 
Lannce. There; and Saint Nicholas be thy speed." 

Nicholas's clerks was, and still is, a cant term for highway- 
men and robbers; but though the expression is very com- 
mon, its origin is a matter of uncertainty. In " i Henry IV." 
(ii. i) it is thus alluded to: 

" Gadshill. Sirrah, if they meet not with Saint Nicholas' clerks, I'll 
giv'e thee this neck. 

Chamberlain. No. I'll none of it : I pr'thee, keep that for the hang- 
man : for I know thou worshippest Saint Nicholas as truly as a man 
of falsehood may." 

Christmas. Among the observances associated with this 
season, to which Shakespeare alludes, we may mention the 
Christmas Carol, a reference to which is probably made in 
"A Midsummer-Night's Dream " (ii. i), by Titania: 

" No night is now with hymn or carol blest." 

Hamlet (ii. 2) quotes two lines from a popular ballad, en- 
titled the " Song of Jephthah's Daughter," and adds : " The 
first row of the pious chanson will show you more." ' 

In days gone by, the custom of carol-singing was most 
popular, and Warton, in his " History of English Poetry," 
notices a license granted in 1562 to John Tysdale for print- 
ing " Certayne goodly carowles to be songe to the glory of 
God ;" and again " Crestenmas Carowles auctorisshed by 
my lord of London."' 

In the "Taming of the Shrew" (Ind., sc. 2), Sly asks 
whether "a comonty^ is not a Christmas gambold." For- 
merly the sports and merry-makings at this season were on 
a most extensive scale, being presided over by the Lord of 



' Drake's " Shakespeare and his Times." vol. i. p. 198. 
^ See Sandy's " Christmastide, its History, Festivities, and Carols;" 
also Athencruin, Dec. 20, 1856. 
' His blunder for comedy. 



330 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

Misrule.' Again, in ''Love's Labour's Lost" (v. 2), Biron 
speaks of " a Christmas comedy." 

As we have noticed, too, in our chapter on Plants, a gilt 
nutmeg was formerly a common gift at Christmas, and on 
other festive occasions, to which an allusion is probably 
made in the same scene. Lormerly, at this season, the head 
of the house assembled his family around a bowl of spiced 
ale, from which he drank their healths, then passed it to the 
rest, that they might drink too. The word that passed 
among them was the ancient Saxon phrase wass had, i. c, to 
your health. Hence this came to be recognized as the was- 
sail or wassel bowl ; and was the accompaniment to festiv- 
ity of every kind throughout the year. Thus Hamlet (i. 4) 
says : 

" The king doth wake to-night, and takes his rouse, 
Keeps wassail." 

And in " Love's Labour's Lost" (v. 2), Biron speaks of: 
" wakes and wassails, meetings, markets, fairs." 

In " Macbeth " (i. 7), it is used by Lady Macbeth in the 
sense of intemperance, who, speaking of Duncan's two cham- 
berlains, says : 

" Will I with wine and wassail so convince, 
That memory, the warder of the brain, 
Shall be a fume, and the receipt of reason 
A limbeck only." 

In "Antony and Cleopatra" (i. 4), Caesar advises Antony 
to live more temperately, and to leave his " lascivious was- 
sails. 

In the same way, a " wassail candle " denoted a large can- 
dle lighted up at a festival, a reference to which occurs in 
" 2 Henry IV." (i. 2) : 

" See " British Popular Customs," 1876, pp. 459, 463 ; Nares's " Glos- 
sary," vol. ii. p. 943 ; " Antiquarian Repertory," vol. i. p. 218. 

■ This was a deep draught to the health of any one, in which it was 
customary to empty the glass or vessel. 

^ See Deuce's " Illustrations of Shakespeare," 1839, pp. 441-449. 



I 



CUSTOMS CONNECTED WITH THE CALENDAR, 

" Chicf-Jusiicc. You are as a candle, the better part burnt out. 
Falstaff. A wassail candle, my lord ; all tallow." 



331 



A custom which formerly prevailed at Christmas, and has 
not yet died out, was for mummers to go from house to house, 
attired in grotesque attire, performing all kinds of odd antics.' 
Their performances, however, were not confined to this sea- 
son. Thus, in " Coriolanus" (ii. i) Menenius speaks of mak- 
ing " faces like mummers." 

Cakes and Ale. It was formerly customary on holidays 
and saints' days to make cakes in honor of the day. In 
" Twelfth Night" (ii. 3), Sir Toby says : " Dost thou think, 
because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and 
ale ?" To which the Clown replies : " Yes, by Saint Anne ; 
and ginger shall be hot i' the mouth too." 

Wakes. In days gone by, the church wake was an im- 
portant institution, and w^as made the occasion for a thorough 
holiday. Each church, when consecrated, was dedicated to a 
saint, and on the anniversary of that day was kept the wake. 
In many places there was a second wake on the birthday of 
the saint. At such seasons, the floor of the church was 
strev/ed with rushes and flowers, and in the churchyard tents 
were erected, to supply cakes and ale for the use of the 
merrymakers on the following day, which w^as kept as a 
holiday. They are still kept up in many parishes, but in a 
very different manner.'^ In "King Lear" (iii. 6), Edgar 
says : " Come, march to wakes and fairs, and market towns." 
We may also compare "Love's Labour's Lost" (v, 2) and 
"Winter's Tale" (iv, 2). In " Hamlet "' (i. 4) it is used in 
the sense of revel. 

' See " British Popular Customs," pp. 461,469, 478, 480. 
° See Brand's " Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. i. pp. 1-15. 



CHAPTER XII. 

BIRTH AND BAPTISM. 

As every period of human life has its peculiar rites and 
ceremonies, its customs and superstitions, so has that ever 
all-eventful hour which heralds the birth of a fresh actor 
upon the world's great stage. From the cradle to the grave, 
through all the successive epochs of man's existence, we find 
a series of traditional beliefs and popular notions, which have 
been handed down to us from the far-distant past. Al- 
though, indeed, these have lost much of their meaning in the 
lapse of years, yet in many cases they are survivals of primi- 
tive culture, and embody the conceptions of the ancestors 
of the human race. Many of these have been recorded by 
Shakespeare, who, acting upon the great principle of pre- 
senting his audience with matters familiar to them, has 
given numerous illustrations of the manners and supersti- 
tions of his own country, as they existed in his day. Thus, 
in " Richard III." (iii. i), when he represents the Duke of 
Gloster saying, 

" So wise so young, they say, do never live long," 

he alludes to the old superstition, still deeply rooted in the 
minds of the lower orders, that a clever child never lives 
long. In Bright's ''Treatise of Melancholy" (1586, p. 52), 
we read : " I have knowne children languishing of the splene, 
obstructed, and altered in temper, talke with gravity and 
wisdom surpassing those tender years, and their judgments 
carrying a marvellous imitation of the wisdome of the an- 
cient, having after a sort attained that by disease, which 
others have by course of yeares ; whereof I take it the proverb 
ariseth, that ' they be of shorte life who are of wit so preg- 
nant.' " There are sundry superstitious notions relating to 



I 



BIRTH AND BAPTISM. 333 

the teething of children prevalent in our own and other 
countries. In "3 Henry VI." (v. 6), the Duke of Gloster, 
alluding to the peculiarities connected with his birth, relates 

how 

"The midwife wonder'd ; and the women cried 
' O, Jesus bless us, he is born with teeth !' 
And so I was ; which plainly signified 
That I should snarl, and bite, and play the dog." 

It is still believed, for instance, in many places, that if a 
child's first tooth appears in the upper jaw it is an omen of 
its dying in infancy; and when the teeth come early it is 
regarded as an indication that there will soon be another 
baby. In Sussex there is a dislike to throwing away the 
cast teeth of children, from a notion that, should they be 
found and gnawed by any animal, the child's new tooth 
would be exactly like the animal's that had bitten the old 
one. In Durham, when the first teeth come out the cavi- 
ties must be filled with salt, and each tooth burned, while 
the following words are repeated : 

" Fire, fire, burn bone, 
God send me my tooth again." 

In the above passage, then, Shakespeare simply makes 
the Duke of Gloster refer to that extensive folk-lore asso- 
ciated with human birth, showing how careful an observer 
he was in noticing the whims and oddities of his country- 
men. 

Again, one of the foremost dangers supposed to hover 
round the new-born infant was the propensity of witches 
and fairies to steal the most beautiful and well-favored chil- 
dren, and to leave in their places such as were ugly and 
stupid. These were usually called " changelings." Shake- 
speare alludes to this notion in "A Midsummer- Night's 
Dream " (ii. i), where Puck says: 

" Because that she. as her attendant, hath 
A lovely boy, stol'n from an Indian king; 
She never had so sweet a changeling." 

And further on, in the same scene, Oberon says : 



334 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

' I do but beg a little changeling boy, 
To be my henchman." 



As a fairy is, in each case, the speaker, the changeHng in 
this case denotes the child taken by them. So, too, in the 
" Winter's Tale '" (iii. 3), in the passage where the Shepherd 
relates : " it was told me, I should be rich by the fairies ; 
this is some changeling: — open't." As the child here found 
was a beautiful one, the changeling must naturally mean the 
child stolen by the fairies, especially as the gold left with it 
is conjectured to be fairy gold. The usual signification, 
however, of the term changeling is thus marked by Spenser 
(" Fairy Queen," I. x. 65) . 

" From thence a faery thee unweeting reft, 
There as thou slepst in tender swadling band. 
And her base elfin brood there for thee left : 
Such men do chaungelings call, so chaunged by faeries theft." 

Occasionally fairies played pranks with new-born children 
by exchanging them. To this notion King Henry refers 
(" I Henry IV." i. i) when, speaking of Hotspur compared 
with his own profligate son, he exclaims: 

" O that it could be prov'd 
That some night-tripping fairy had exchang'd 
In cradle-clothes our children where they lay. 
And call'd mine Percy, his Plantagenet !" 

To induce the fairies to restore the stolen child, it was 
customary in Ireland either to put the one supposed of be- 
ing a changeling on a hot shovel, or to torment it in some 
other way. It seems that, in Denmark, the mother heats 
the oven, and places the changeling on the peel, pretending 
to put it in, or whips it severely with a rod, or throws it 
into the water. In the Western Isles of Scotland idiots are 
supposed to be the fairies' changelings, and, in order to re- 
gain the lost child, parents have recourse to the following 
device. They place the changeling on the beach, below 
high-water mark, when the tide is out, and pay no heed to 
its screams, believing that the fairies, rather than suffer their 
offspring to be drowned by the rising water, will convey it 



BIRTH AND BAPTISM. 335 

away, and restore the child they had stolen. The sign that 
this has been done is the cessation of the child's screaming. 
The most effectual preservative, however, against fairy influ- 
ence, is supposed to be baptism ; and hence, among the su- 
perstitious, this rite is performed as soon as possible. 

A form of superstition very common in days gone by was 
the supposed influence of the " Evil eye," being designated 
by the terms "o'erlooked," " forelooked," or "eye-bitten," 
certain persons being thought to possess the power of inflict- 
ing injury by merely looking on those whom they wished 
to harm. Even the new-born child was not exempt from 
this danger, and various charms were practised to avert it. 
In the "Merry Wives of Windsor" (v. 5), Pistol says of 
Falstaff: 

" Vile worm, thou wast o'erlook'd, even in thy birth." 

This piece of folk-lore may be traced back to the time of 
the Romans, and, in the late Professor Conington's trans- 
lation of the " Satires of Persius," it is thus spoken of: 
"Look here! a grandmother or a superstitious aunt has 
taken baby from his cradle, and is charming his forehead 
against mischief by the joint action of her middle-finger and 
her purifying spittle ; for she knows right well how to check 
the evil eye." ' Is is again alluded to in the " Merchant 
of Venice" (iii. 2), where Portia, expressing to Bassanio her 
feelings of regard, declares : 

" Beshrew your eyes, 
They have o'erlook'd me, and divided me; 
One half of me is yours, the other half yours ;" 

and in "Titus Andronicus " (ii. i), Aaron speaks of Tamora 
as : 

" faster bound to Aaron's charming eyes 
Than is Prometheus tied to Caucasus." 

This superstition, however, is not yet obsolete, but lingers 
on in many country places. 



' See Deuce's " Illustrations of Shakespeare," p. 383 ; Brand's " Pop. 
Antiq.," 1849, '^'ol- iii. pp. 44-46, 326. 



336 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

We may also compare a similar phrase made use of by 
Cleopatra (" Antony and Cleopatra," iii. 7), in answer to 
Enobarbus : 

" Thou hast forspoke my being in these wars," 

the word forcspcak having anciently had the meaning of 
charm or bewitch, \\Vq forbid in " Macbeth " (i. 3): 

" He shall live a man forbid." ' 

Among the numerous customs associated with the birth 
of a child may be mentioned the practice of giving presents 
at the announcement of this important event. In " Henry 
VIII." (v. i), on the old lady's making known to the king 
the happy tidings of the birth of a princess, he says to Lovell: 

" Give her an hundred marks. I'll to the queen." 

The old lady, however, resents what she considers a paltry 
sum : 

" An hundred marks ! By this light, I'll ha' more. 
An ordinary groom is for such payment. 
I will have more, or scold it out of him." 

It was an ancient custom — one which is not quite out of 
use — for the sponsors at christenings to offer silver or gilt 
spoons as a present to the child. These were called " apos- 
tle spoons," because the extremity of the handle was formed 
into the figure of one or other of the apostles. Such as 
w«re opulent and generous gave the whole twelve ; those 
who were moderately rich or liberal escaped at the expense 
of the four evangelists, or even sometimes contented them- 
selves with presenting one spoon only, which exhibited the 
figure of any saint, in honor of whom the child received its 
name. In " Henry VIII." (v. 2) it is in allusion to this cus- 
tom that, when Cranmer professes to be unworthy of being 
a sponsor to the young princess, Shakespeare makes the 
king reply : 

' See Napier's "Folk-Lore of West of Scotland," 1879, pp. 34-40; 
Keightley's "Fairy Mythology;" Brand's " Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. iii. 
PP- 73. 74- 



I 



BIRTH AND BAPTISM. j^/ 

'• Come, come, my lord, you'd spare your spoons." 

A story is related of Shakespeare promising spoons to 
one of Ben Jonson's children, in a collection of anecdotes 
entitled " Merry Passages and Jests," compiled by Sir Nich- 
olas L'Estrange (MSS. Harl. 6395): " Shakespeare was god- 
father to one of Ben Jonson's children, and after the christ'n- 
ing, being in a deepe study, Jonson came to cheere him up, 
and ask't him why he was so melancholy. ' No faith, Ben 
(sayes he), not I ; but I have been considering a great while 
what should be the fittest gift for me to bestow upon my 
godchild, and I have resolv'd at last.' ' I pr'y thee, what?' 
sayes he. ' I' faith, Ben, I'le e'en give him a douzen good 
Latin spoones, and thou shalt translate them.' " " Shake- 
speare," says Mr. Thoms,' " willing to show his wit, if not 
his wealth, gave a dozen spoons, not of silver, but of latten, 
a name formerly used to signify a mixed metal resembling 
brass, as being the most appropriate gift to the child of a 
father so learned." In Middleton's " Chaste Maid of Cheap- 
side," 1620: 

" 2 Gossip. What has he given her.-* What is it, gossip? 

3 Gossip. A fair, high-standing cup, and two great 'postle spoons, 
one of them gilt." 

And Beaumont and Fletcher, in the " Noble Gentleman " 
(v. I): 

" I'll be a gossip, Beaufort, 
I have an odd apostle spoon." 

The gossip's feast, held in honor of those who were asso- 
ciated in the festivities of a christening-, was a very ancient 
English custom, and is frequently mentioned by dramatists 
of the Elizabethan age. The term gossip or godsip, a Sax- 
on word signifying cognata ex parte dei, or godmother, is 
well defined by Richard Verstegan, in his " Restitution of 
Decayed Intelligence." He says : " Our Christian ancestors, 
understanding a spiritual affinity to grow between the pa- 
rents and such as undertooke for the child at baptism, called 

* " Anecdotes and Traditions," 1839, p. 3. 
22 



338 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

each other by the name o{ godsib, which is as much as to say- 
that they were sib together, that is, of kin together through 
God. And the childe, in hke manner, called such his god- 
fathers or godmothers." 

As might be expected, it is often alluded to by Shake- 
speare. Thus, in the " Comedy of Errors " (v. i), we read : 

"Abbess. Thirty-three years have I but gone in travail 
Of you, my sons : and till this present hour 
My heavy burthen ne'er delivered. 
The duke, my husband, and my children both, 
And you the calendars of their nativity, 
Go to a gossip's feast, and go with me ; 
After so long grief, such festivity ! 

Duke. With all my heart I'll gossip at this feast." 

And again, in " A Midsummer-Night's Dream " (ii. i), the 
mischievous Puck says : 

" sometime lurk I in a gossip's bowl. 
In very likeness of a roasted crab ; 
And, when she drinks, against her lips I bob. 
And on her wither'd dewlap pour the ale." 

And, once more, we find Capulet, in " Romeo and Juliet" 
(iii. 5\ saying to the Nurse : 

" Peace, you mumbling fool ! 
Utter your gravity o'er a gossip's bowl ; 
For here we need it not." 

Referring to entertainments at christenings, we find the fol- ■ 
lowing in the " Batchelor's Banquet," 1603 (attributed to^ 
Dekker) : " What cost and trouble it will be to have all 
things fine against the Christening Day ; what store of sugar, 
biskets, comphets, and caraways, marmalet, and marchpane, 
with all kinds of sweet-suckers and superfluous banqueting 
stuff, with a hundred other odd and needless trifles, which 
at that time must fill the pockets of dainty dames," by which 
it appears the ladies not only ate what they pleased, but 
pocketed likewise. Upon this and the falling- off of the 
custom of giving " apostle spoons " at the christening, we 
read in " Shipman's Gossip," 1666: 



BIRTH AND BAPTISM. 339 

" Especially since gossips now 
Eat more at christenings than bestow. 
Formerly when they us'd to troul 
Gilt bowls of sack, they gave the bowl ; 
Two spoons at least ; an use ill kept ; 
'Tis well now if our own be left." 

Strype tells us that, in 1559, the son of Sir Thomas Cham- 
berlayne was baptized at St. Benet's Church, Paul's Wharf, 
when " the Church was hung with cloth of arras, and after 
the christening were brought wafers, comfits, and divers 
banqueting dishes, and hypocras and Muscadine wine, to 
entertain the guests." 

In " Henry VIII." (v. 4), the Porter says : " Do you look 
for ale and cakes here, you rude rascals ?" 

A term formerly in use for the name given at baptism was 
" Christendom," an allusion to which we find in " All's Well 
that Ends Well" (i. i), where Helena says: 

" with a world 
Of pretty, fond, adoptious Christendoms 
That blinking Cupid gossips," 

the meaning evidently being, a number of pretty, fond, 
adopted appellations or Christian names to which blind Cu- 
pid stands godfather. The expression is often used for bap- 
tism by old writers; and Singer' quotes from " King John" 

(iv. I): 

" By my Christendom, 
So I were out of prison, and kept sheep, 
I should be as merry as the day is long." 

Stecvens observes that, in the Puritanical times, it was 
usual to christen children with the names of moral and relig- 
ious virtues — a practice to which allusion seems to be made 
in " The Tempest" (ii. i) by Antonio: 

" Temperance was a delicate wench." 

So Taylor, the Water-Poet, in his description of a strumpet, 
says : 

' " Shakespeare," 1875, vol. iv. p. 314. 



340 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

" Though bad they be, they will not bate an ace, 
To be call'd Prudence, Temperance, Faith, or Grace." 



In days gone by a " chrisom " or " christom child " was 
one who had recently been baptized, and died within the 
month of birth, the term having originated in the " face- 
cloth, or piece of hnen, put upon the head of a child newly 
baptized." The word was formed from the chrism, that is, 
the anointing, which formed a part of baptism before the 
Reformation. Thus, in " Henry V," (ii. 3), the hostess, Mrs. 
Quickly, means " chrisom child " in the following passage, 
where she speaks of FalstafT's death: "'A made a finer end, 
and went away an it had been any christom child." In a 
beautiful passage of Bishop Taylor's " Holy Dying" (chap. i. 
sec. 2), this custom is thus spoken of: " Every morning 
creeps out of a dark cloud, leaving behind it an ignorance 
and silence deep as midnight, and undiscerned as are the 
phantoms that made a chrisom child to smile." Referring 
to the use of the chrisom-cloth in connection with baptism, 
it appears that, after the usual immersion in water, the priest 
made a cross on the child's head with oil, after which the 
chrisom was put on, the priest asking at the same time the 
infant's name, and saying, " Receive this white, pure, and 
holy vestment, which thou shalt wear before the tribunal 
of our Lord Jesus Christ, that thou mayest inherit eternal 
life. Amen." It was to be worn seven days; but after the 
Reformation, however, the use of oil was omitted, and the 
chrisom was worn by the child till the mother's churching, 
when it was returned to the church. If the child died be- 
fore the churching, it was buried in the chrisom, and hence 
it may be that the child itself was called a chrisom or chris- 
omer.* Thus, it will be seen that Dame Quickly simply 
compares the manner of Falstaff's death to that of a young 
infant. In registers and bills of mortality we find infants 
alluded to under the term " Chrisoms." Burn, in his " His- 

' Douce's " Illustrations of Shakespeare," 1859, pp. 299, 300 ; Nares's 
" Glossary," vol. i. p. 160; see Brand's " Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. ii. pp. 
84, 85. 



BIRTH AND BAPTISM. 34I 

toiy of Parish Registers" (1862, p. 127), gives the sub- 
joined entry from a register of Westminster Abbey: "The 
Princess Ann's child a chrissome, bu. in y^ vault, Oct. 22, 
1687." 

In Graunt's " Bills of Mortality," cited in Johnson's Dic- 
tionary, we read : " When the convulsions were but few, 
the number of chrisoms and infants was greater." The 
" bearing -cloth " was the mantle which generally covered 
the child when it was carried to the font. It is noticed in 
the " Winter's Tale " (iii. 3), by the Shepherd, who, on the 
discovery of Perdita, says to the Clown : " Here's a sight 
for thee ; look thee, a bearing-cloth for a squire's child ! 
Look thee here; take up, take up, boy; open't." In Stow's 
"Chronicle" (1631, p. 1039), ^'''^ ^^^ told that about this 
time it was not customary " for godfathers and godmothers 
generally to give plate at the baptisme of children, but only 
to give ' christening shirts,' with little bands and cuffs, 
wrought either with silk or blue thread. The best of them, 
for chief persons, were edged with a small lace of black silk 
and gold, the highest price of which, for great men's chil- 
dren, was seldom above a noble, and the common sort, two, 
three, or four, and six shillings a piece." 



CHAPTER XIII. 

MARRIAGE. 

The style of courtship which prevailed in Shakespeare's 
time, and the numerous customs associated with the mar- 
riage ceremony, may be accurately drawn from the many 
allusions interspersed through his plays. From these, it 
would seem that the mode of love-making was much the 
same among all classes, often lacking that polish and re- 
fined expression which are distinguishing characteristics 
nowadays. As Mr. Drake remarks,^ the amatory dia- 
logues of Hamlet, Hotspur, and Henry V. are not more 
refined than those which occur between Master Fenton 
and Anne Page, in the " Merry Wives of Windsor," be- 
tween Lorenzo and Jessica, in the " Merchant of Venice," 
and between Orlando and Rosalind, in " As You Like It." 
These last, which may be considered as instances taken 
from the middle class of life, together with a few drawn 
from the lower rank of rural manners, such as the court- 
ship of Touchstone and Audrey, and of Silvius and Phoebe, 
in "As You Like It," are good illustrations of this subject, 
although it must be added that, in point of fancy, sentiment, 
and simplicity, the most pleasing love -scenes in Shake- 
speare are those of Romeo and Juliet and of Florizel and 
Perdita. 

The ancient ceremony of betrothing seems still to have 
been in full use in Shakespeare's day. Indeed, he gives us 
several interesting passages upon the subject of troth-plight. 
Thus, in "Measure for Measure" (iii. i), we learn that the 
unhappiness of the poor, dejected Mariana was caused by a 
violation of the troth-plight : 

1 " Shakespeare and His Times," 1817, vol. i. p. 220. 



MARRIAGE. 



343 



" Dtike. She should this Angelo have married ; was affianced to her 
by oath, and the nuptial appointed : between which time of the con- 
tract, and limit of the solemnity, her brother Frederick was wrecked 
at sea, having in that perished vessel the dowry of his sister. But 
mark how heavily this befell to the poor gentlewoman : there she lost 
a noble and renowned brother, in his love toward her ever most kind 
and natural ; with him, the portion and sinew of her fortune, her mar- 
riage-dowry ; with both, her combinate husband, this well-seeming 
Angelo. 

Isabella. Can this be so ? Did Angelo so leave her? 

Duke. Left her in her tears, and dried not one of them with his com- 
fort; swallowed his vows whole, pretending in her discoveries of dis- 
honour; in few, bestowed her on her own lamentation, which she yet 
wears for his sake ; and he, a marble to her tears, is washed with them, 
but relents not." 

It is evident that Angelo and Mariana were bound by- 
oath ; the nuptial was appointed ; there was a prescribed 
time between the contract and the performance of the so- 
lemnity of the Church. The lady, however, having lost her 
dowry, the contract was violated by her "combinate" or 
affianced husband — the oath, no doubt, having been ten- 
dered by a minister of the Church, in the presence of wit- 
nesses. In " Twelfth Night " (iv. 3) we have a minute de- 
scription of such a ceremonial ; for, when Olivia is hastily 
espoused to Sebastian, she says; 

" Now go with me and with this holy man 
Into the chantry by : there, before him, 
And underneath that consecrated roof, 
Plight me the full assurance of your faith ; 
That my most jealous and too doubtful soul 
May live at peace. He shall conceal it, 
Whiles you are willing it shall come to note ; 
What time we will our celebration keep 
According to my birth." 

This, then, was a private ceremony before a single wit- 
ness, who would conceal it till the proper period of the 
public ceremonial. Olivia, fancying that she has thus es- 
poused the page, repeated!)'- calls him " husband ;" and, be- 
ing rejected, she summons the priest to declare (v. i) : 



344 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

"what thou dost know 
Hath newly paos'd betv;een this youth and me." 



The priest answers : 

" A contract of eternal bond of love, 
Confirm'd by mutual joinder of your hands. 
Attested by the holy close of lips, 
Strengthen'd by interchangement of your rings; 
And all the ceremony of this compact 
Seal'd in my function, by my testimony : 
Since when, my watch hath told me, toward my grave 
I have travell'd but two hours." 

Again, in the "Winter's Tale"(iv. 4), which contains 
many a perfect picture of real rustic hfe, it appears that, 
occasionally, the troth-plight was exchanged without the 
presence of a priest ; but that witnesses were essential to 
the ceremony: 

" Florisel. . . . O, hear me breathe my life 
Before this ancient sir, who, it should seem. 
Hath sometime lov'd : I take thy hand, this hand. 
As soft as dove's down and as white as it, 
Or Ethiopian's tooth, or the fann'd snow, that's bolted 
By the northern blasts twice o'er. 

PoUxe7ics. What follows this .-' — 

How prettily the young swain seems to wash 
The hand, was fair before ! — I have put you out : — 
But, to your protestation ; let me hear 
What you profess. 

Florizel. Do, and be witness to 't. 

Polixcncs. And this my neighbour too ? 

Florizel. And he, and more 

Than he, and men ; the earth, the heavens, and all ; 
That, were I crown'd the most imperial monarch. 
Thereof most worthy ; were I the fairest youth 
That ever made eye swerve ; had force and knowledge 
More than was ever man's, I would not prize them 
Without her love ; for her employ them all ; 
Commend them, and condemn them, to her service, 
Or to their own perdition. 

Polixenes. Fairly offer'd. 

Camillo. This shows a sound affection. 



MARRIAGE. 345 

Shepherd. But, my daughter. 

Say you the Uke to him ? 

Pcrdita. I cannot speak 

So well, nothing so well ; no, nor mean better : 
By the pattern of mine own thoughts I cut out 
The purity of his. 

Shepherd. Take hands, a bargain ! 

And, friends unknown, you shall bear witness to't : 
I give my daughter to him, and will make 
Her portion equal his.* 

Florizel. O, that must be 

I' the virtue of your daughter : one being dead, 
I shall have more than you can dream of yet ; 
Enough then for your wonder. But, come on, 
Contract us 'fore these witnesses. 

Shepherd. Come, your hand ; 

And, daughter, yours." 

To the argument of Polixenes, that the father of Florizel 
ought to know of his proceeding, the young man answers: 

" Come, come, he must not. 
Mark our contract." 

And then the father, discovering himself, exclaims: 

" Mark your divorce, young sir." 

Here, then, as Mr. Knight remarks,' in the publicity of a 



• On entering into any contract, or plighting of troth, the clapping 
of the hands together set the seal, as in the "Winter's Tale" (i. 2), 
where Leontes says : 

" Ere I could make thee open thy white hand, 
And clap thyself my love ; then didst thou utter 
/ atn yours forez'er." 

So, too, in " The Tempest " (iii. i ) : 

" Mz'rajida. My husband, then } 

Ferdinand. Ay, with a heart as willing 

As bondage e'er of freedom : here's my hand. 
Miranda. And mine, with my heart in't." 

And in the old play of " Ram Alley," by Barry (161 1), we read, " Come, 
clap hands, a match." The custom is not yet disused in common life. 
" " The Stratford Shakespeare," 1854, vol. i. p. 70. 



346 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

village festival, the hand of the loved one is solemnly taken 
by her lover, who breathes his love before the ancient stran- 
ger who is accidentally present. The stranger is called to 
be a witness to the protestation, and so is the neighbor who 
has come with him. The maiden is called upon by her fa- 
ther to speak, and then the old man adds : 

" Take hands, a bargain !" 

The friends are to bear witness to it : 

" I give my daughter to him, and will make 
Her portion equal his." 

The impatient lover then again exclaims : 

" Contract us 'fore these witnesses." 

The shepherd takes the hands of the youth and the maiden. 
Again the lover exclaims : 

" Mark our contract." 

The ceremony is left incomplete, for the princely father 
discovers himself with : 

" Mark your divorce, young sir." 

It appears, therefore, that espousals before witnesses were 
considered as constituting a valid marriage, if followed up 
within a limited time by the marriage of the Church. How- 
ever much the Reformed Church might have endeavored to 
abrogate this practice, it was unquestionably the ancient 
habit of the people.' It was derived from the Roman law, 
and still prevails in the Lutheran Church. 

Besides exchanging kisses," accompanied with vows of 
everlasting affection, and whispering lovers' reassurances of 
fidelity, it was customary to interchange rings. In Shake- 
speare's plays, however, espousals are made with and without 

* Knight's " Stratford Shakespeare," p. 73. 
= Cf. " King John " (ii. 2) : 

" KzJig Philip. Young princes, close your hands. 

Austria. And your lips too ; for, I am well assured. 
That I did so, when I was first assured." 



MARRIAGE. 



347 



the use of the ring. Thus, in the case of Ferdinand and 
Miranda, we read of their joining hands only (" Tempest," 
iii. i) : 

"Ferdinand. Ay, with a heart as wilHng 
As bondage e'er of freedom ; here's my hand. 

Miranda. And mine, with my heart in't ; and now farewell, 
Till half an hour hence." 

In the passage already quoted from " Twelfth Night" (v. i) 
there seems to have been a mutual interchange of rings. 

Some, indeed, considered that a betrothal was not com- 
plete unless each spouse gave the other a circlet. Lady 
Anne, in " Richard III." (i. 2), is made to share in this mis- 
conception : 

" Glostcr. Vouchsafe to wear this ring. 

Anne. To take, is not to give. 

Gloster. Look, how my ring encompasseth thy finger, 
Even so thy breast encloseth my poor heart : 
Wear both of them, for both of them are thine." 

In " Two Gentlemen of Verona " (ii. 2) we read : 

'' Julia. Keep this remembrance for thy Julia's sake {giving a ring). 
Proteiis. Why, then, we'll make exchange ; here, take you this. 
Julia. And seal the bargain with a holy kiss." 

A joint, or gimmal, ring was anciently a common token 
among lovers, an allusion to which is made by Emilia, in 
" Othello " (iv. 3) : "I would not do such a thing for a joint- 
ring." Their nature will be best understood by a passage in 
Dryden's " Don Sebastian " (1690, act v.) : 

" A curious artist wrought them, 
With joints so close, as not to be perceiv'd ; 
Yet are they both each other's counterpart, 

and in the midst, 
A heart, divided in two halves, was plac'd." 

They were generally made of two or three hoops, so chased 
and engraved that, when fastened together by a single rivet, 
the whole three formed one design, the usual device being 
a hand. When an engagement w-as contracted, the ring was 



348 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

taken apart, each spouse taking a division, and the third one 
being presented to the principal witness of the contract.' 
Hence such a ring was known as a " Sponsalium Annuhs," 
to which Herrick thus refers : 

"Thou sent'st me a true-love knot, but I 
Returned a ring of jimmals, to imply 
Thy love hath one knot, mine a triple tye." 

The term is used by the Duke of Anjou, in " i Henry VI." 
(i. 2): 

" I think, by some odd gimmors or device, 

Their arms are set like clocks, still to strike on ; 

Else ne'er could they hold out so as they do." 

Again, in " Henry V." (iv. 2), Grandpre tells how, 

" in their pale dull mouths the gimmal bit 
Lies foul with chew'd grass, still and motionless." 

Most readers of the "Merchant of Venice" remember 
the mirthful use which Shakespeare makes of lovers' rings. 
Portia says (iii. 2), when giving her wealth and self to Bas- 
sanio : 

" I give them with this ring ; 
Which when you part from, lose, or give away. 
Let it presage the ruin of your love." 

The last act, too, gives several particulars about lovers' rings, 
which, in Elizabethan England,^ often had posies engraved 
on them, and were worn by men on the left hand. Grati- 
ano, for example, says : 

"About a hoop of gold, a paltry ring 
That she did give me ; whose posy was 
For all the world like cutlers' poetry 
Upon a knife, ' Love me and leave me not.'" 

Again Bassanio exclaims : 

" Why, I were best to cut my left hand oflf, 
And swear I lost the ring defending it." 

^ See Nares's " Glossary," vol. ii. p. 363 ; " Archaeologia," vol. xiv. 
p. 7 ; Jones's " Finger Ring Lore," 1877, pp. 313-318. 

'^ See Jeallfreson's " Brides and Bridals," 1873, vol. i. pp. "]"], 78. 



MARRIAGE. 



349 



In "Taming of the Shrew" Shakespeare gives numerous 
allusions to the customs of his day connected with court- 
ship and marriage. Indeed, in the second act (sc. 2) we have 
a perfect betrothal scene : 

" Petruchio. Give me thy hand, Kate : I will unto Venice, 
To buy apparel 'gainst the wedding-day. — 
Provide the feast, father, and bid the guests ; 
I will be sure my Katharine shall be fine. 

Baptista. I know not what to say : but give me your hands ; 
God send you joy, Petruchio ! 'tis a match. 

Gremio. Tram'o. Amen, say we ; we will be witnesses. 

Petruchio. Father, and wife, and gentlemen, adieu ; 
I will to Venice ; Sunday comes apace. 
We will have rings, and things, and fine array; 
And, kiss me, Kate, we will be married o' Sunday." 

Although Katharina is only his spouse, and Baptista not 
yet his father-in-law, Petruchio, in accordance with fashion, 
calls her "wife" and him "father." The spouses of old 
times used to term one another "husband" and "wife," 
for, as they argued, they were as good as husband and wife. 
Formerly there was a kind of betrothal or marriage con- 
tract prevalent among the low orders called "hand-fasting," 
or "hand-festing," said to have been much in use among 
the Danes, and which is mentioned by Ray in his "Glossary 
of Northumbrian Words." It simply means hand-fastening 
or binding. In "Cymbeline" (i. 5) the phrase is used in its 
secondary sense by the Queen, who, speaking of Pisanio, 
declares that he is 

" A sly and constant knave, 
Not to be shak'd ; the agent for his master, 
And the remembrancer of her, to hold 
The hand-fast to her lord.'' 

In the " Christian State of Matrimony," 1543, we find the 
following illustration of this custom : " Yet in this thing 
almost must I warn every reasonable and honest person to 
beware that in the contracting of marriage they dissemble 
not, nor set forth any lie. Every man, likewise, must esteem 
the person to whom he is * handfasted ' none otherwise than 



350 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

for his own spouse ; though as yet it be not done in the 
church, nor in the street. After the handfasting and making 
of the contract, the church-going and wedding should not 
be deferred too long." The author then goes on to rebuke 
a custom " that at the handfasting there is made a great 
feast and superfluous banquet." Sir John Sinclair, in the 
" Statistical Account of Scotland " (1794, vol. xii. p. 615), tells 
us that at a fair annually held at Eskdalemuir, Dumfries- 
shire, " it was the custom for the unmarried persons of both 
sexes to choose a companion according to their liking, with 
whom they were to live till that time next year. This was 
called ' handfasting,' or hand-in-fist. If they were pleased 
with each other at that time then they continued together 
for life ; if not, they separated, and were free to make an- 
other choice as at the first." 

Shakespeare has given us numerous illustrations of the 
marriage customs of our forefathers, many of which are 
interesting as relics of the past, owing to their having long 
ago fallen into disuse. The fashion of introducing a bowl 
of wine into the church at a wedding, which is alluded to 
in the " Taming of the Shrew" (iii. 2), to be drunk by the 
bride and bridegroom and persons present, immediately 
after the marriage ceremony, is very ancient. Gremio re- 
lates how Petruchio 

"stamp'd and swore, 
As if the vicar meant to cozen him. 
But after many ceremonies done, 
He calls for wine : — ' A health !' quoth he, as if 
He had been aboard, carousing to his mates 
After a storm : — quafT'd off the muscadel. 
And threw the sops ' all in the sexton's face ; 
Having no other reason 
But that his beard grew thin and hungerly. 
And seem'd to ask him sops as he was drinking." 

It existed even among our Gothic ancestors, and is men- 
tioned in the ordinances of the household of Henry VII., 
" For the Marriage of a Princess : — ' Then pottes of ipocrice 

' Sops in wine. 



MARRIAGE. 



351 



to be ready, and to be put into cupps with soppe, and to be 
borne to the estates, and to take a soppe and drinke.' " It 
was also practised at the magnificent marriage of Queen 
Mary and Philip, in Winchester Cathedral, and at the mar- 
riage of the Elector Palatine to the daughter of James I., in 
161 2-1 3. Indeed, it appears to have been the practice at 
most marriages. In Jonson's " Magnetic Lady" it is called 
a " knitting cup ;" in Middleton's " No Wit like a Woman's," 
the " contracting cup." In Robert Armin's comedy of" The 
History of the Two Maids of More Clacke," 1609, the play 
begins wath : 

" Enter a maid strewing Jlinucrs, and a serving-man perfuming the door. 

Maid. Strew, strew. 

Mail. The muscadine stays for the bride at church : 
The priest and Hymen's ceremonies tend 
To make them man and wife." 

Again, in Beaumont and Fletcher's " Scornful Lady " (i. i), 
the custom is referred to : ' 

" If my wedding-smock were on. 
Were the gloves bought and given, the Hcense come. 
Were the rosemary branches dipp'd, and all 
The hippocras and cakes eat and drunk off." 

We find it enjoined in the Hereford missal. By the Sarum 
missal it is directed that the sops immersed in this wine, as 
w'ell as the liquor itself, and the cup that contained it, should 
be blessed by the priest. The beverage used on this occa- 
sion was to be drunk by the bride and bridegroom and the 
rest of the company. 

The nuptial kiss in the church was anciently part of the 
marriage ceremony, as appears from a rubric in one of the 
Salisbury missals. In the " Taming of the Shrew," Shake- 
speare has made an excellent use of this custoin, where he 
relates how Petruchio (iii. 2) 

" took the bride about the neck 
And kiss'd her lips with such a clamorous smack 
That, at the parting, all the church did echo." 

' See " Brand's Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. ii. pp. 136, 139. 



352 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



Again, in " Richard II." (v. i), where the Duke of Nor- 
thumberland announces to the king that he is to be sent to 
Pomfret, and his wife to be banished to France, the king 
exclaims : 

" Doubly divorc'd! — Bad men, ye violate 
A twofold marriage, — 'twixt my crown and me. 
And then, betwixt me and my married wife. — 
Let me unkiss the oath 'twixt thee and me ; 
And yet not so, for with a kiss 'twas made." 

Marston, too, in his " Insatiate Countess," mentions it: 

" The kisse thou gav'st me in the church, here take." 

The practice is still kept up among the poor ; and Brand * 
says it is " still customary among persons of middling rank 
as well as the vulgar, in most parts of England, for the 
young men present at the marriage ceremony to salute the 
bride, one by one, the moment it is concluded." 

Music was the universal accompaniment of weddings in 
olden times.' The allusions to wedding music that may be 
found in the works of Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and other 
Elizabethan dramatists, testify, as Mr. Jeaffreson points out, 
that, in the opinion of their contemporaries, a wedding with- 
out the braying of trumpets and beating of drums and clash- 
ing of cymbals was a poor affair. In "As You Like It" 
(v. 4), Hymen says : 

" Whiles a wedlock-hymn we sing." 

And in " Romeo and Juliet" (iv. 5), Capulet says: 

" Our wedding cheer, to a sad burial feast; 
Our solemn hymns to sullen dirges change." 

It seems to have been customary for the bride at her 
wedding to wear her hair unbraided and hanging loose over 
her shoulders. There may be an allusion to this custom in 
" King John" (iii. i), where Constance says: 

' " Pop. Antiq.," vol. ii. p. 140. 

" •' Brides and Bridals," 1873, vol. i. p. 252. 



MARRIAGE. 

" O Lewis, stand fast ! the devil tempts thee here 
In hkeness of a new untrimmed bride." 



353 



At the celebration of her marriage with the Palatine, Eliza- 
beth Stuart wore " her hair dishevelled and hanging down 
her shoulders." Heywood speaks of this practice in the 
following graphic words : 

" At length the blushing bride comes, with her hair 
Dishevelled 'bout her shoulders." 

It has been suggested that the bride's veil, which of late 
years has become one of the most conspicuous features of 
her costume, may be nothing more than a milliner's substi- 
tute, which in old time concealed not a few of the bride's 
personal attractions, and covered her face when she knelt at 
the altar. Mr. Jeafferson ' thinks it may be ascribed to the 
Hebrew ceremony; or has come from the East, where veils 
have been worn from time immemorial. Some, again, con- 
nect it with the yellow veil which was worn by the Roman 
brides. Strange, too, as it may appear, it is nevertheless 
certain that knives and daggers were formerly part of the 
customary accoutrements of brides. Thus, Shakespeare, in 
the old quarto, 1597, makes Juliet wear a knife at the friar's 
cell, and when she is about to take the potion. This custom, 
however, is easily accounted for, when we consider that 
women anciently wore a knife suspended from their girdle. 
Many allusions to this practice occur in old writers.' In 
Dekker's " Match Mc in London," 163 1, a bride says to her 
jealous husband : 

" See, at my girdle hang my wedding knives I 
With those dispatch me." 



In the " Witch of Edmonton," 1658, Somerton says: 

" But see, the bridegroom and bride come ; the new 
Pair of Sheffield knives fitted both to one sheath." 

Among other wedding customs alluded to by Shakespeare 

» " Brides and Bridals," vol. i. p. 177. 

' See Brand's " Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. ii. pp. 131-133. 

23 



354 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



we may mention one referred to in " Taming of the Shrew " 
(ii. i), where Katharina, speaking of Bianca, says to her father : 
" She is your treasure, she must have a husband : 
I must dance bare-foot on her wedding-day, 
And, for your love to her, lead apes in hell," 

it being a popular notion that unless the elder sisters danced 
barefoot at the marriage of a younger one, they would in- 
evitably become old maids, and be condemned " to lead 
apes in hell." The expression " to lead apes in hell," ap- 
plied above to old maids, has given rise to much discussion, 
and the phrase has not yet been satisfactorily explained. 
Steevens suggests that it might be considered an act of 
posthumous retribution for women who refused to bear chil- 
dren to be condemned to the care of apes in leading-strings 
after death. Malone says that "to lead apes" was in 
Shakespeare's time one of the employments of a bear-ward, 
who often carried about one of these animals with his bear. 
Nares explains the expression by reference to the word ape 
as denoting a fool, it probably meaning that those coquettes 
who made fools of men, and led them about without real 
intention of marrias^e, would have them still to lead against 
their will hereafter. In " Much Ado About Nothing " (ii. i), ■! 
Beatrice says: "therefore I will even take sixpence in ear- 
nest of the bear-ward, and lead his apes into hell." Douce' 
tells us that homicides and adulterers were in ancient times 
compelled, by way of punishment, to lead an ape by the 
neck, with their mouths affixed in a very unseemly manner 
to the animal's tail. 

In accordance with an old custom, the bride, on the wed- 
ding-night, had to dance with every guest, and play the 
amiable, however much against her own wishes. In " Henry 
VIII." (v. 2), there seems to be an allusion to this practice, 

where the king says : 

" I had thought. 
They had parted so much honesty among them. 
At least, good manners, as not thus to suffer 
A man of his place, and so near our favour, 
To dance attendance on their lordships' pleasures." 

'■ '' Illustrations of Shakespeare," p. 203. 



MARRIAGE. 355 

In the "Christian State of Matrimony" (1543) we read 
thus : " Then must the poor bryde kepe foote with a daun- 
cers, and refuse none, how scabbed, foule, droncken, rude, 
and shameless soever he be." 

As in our own time, so, too, formerly, flowers entered 
largely into the marriage festivities. Most readers will at 
once call to mind that touching scene in " Romeo and Juli- 
et " (iv. 5), where Capulet says, referring to Juliet's supposed 
untimely death : 

"Our bridal flowers serve for a buried corse." 

It seems, too, in days gone by to have been customary to 
deck the bridal bed with flow^ers, various allusions to which 
are given by Shakespeare. Thus, in '* Hamlet" (v. i), the 
queen, speaking of poor Ophelia, says : 

" I hop'd thou should'st have been my Hamlet's wife ; 
I thought thy bride-bed to have deck'd, sweet maid." 

In "The Tempest" (iv. i) we may compare the words of 
Prospero, who, alluding to the marriage of his daughter 
Miranda with Ferdinand, by way of warning, cautions them 
lest 

" barren hate, 
Sour-ey'd disdain and discord shall bestrew 
The union of your bed with weeds so loathly 
That you shall hate it both." 

In the Papal times no new-married couple could go to 
bed together till the bridal-bed had been blessed — this being 
considered one of the most important of the marriage cere- 
monies. " On the evening of the wedding-day," says Mr. 
Jeaffreson,' " when the married couple sat in state in the 
bridal-bed, before the exclusion of the guests, who assembled 
to commend them yet again to Heaven's keeping, one or 
more priests, attended by acolytes swinging to and fro 
lighted censers, appeared in the crowded chamber to bless 
the couch, its occupants, and the truckle-bed, and fumigate 

' " Brides and Bridals," vol. i. p. 98 ; see Brand's " Pop. Antiq.," vol. 
ii. p. 175- 



356 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



the room with hallowing incense." In "A Midsummer- 
Night's Dream" (v. i), Oberon says: 

" Now, until the break of day. 
Through this house each fairy stray. 
To the best bride-bed will we. 
Which by us shall blessed be ; 
And the issue there create 
Ever shall be fortunate." 

Steevens, in illustration of this custom, quotes from Chau- 
cer's "The Merchant's Tale" (ed. Tyrwhitt), line 9693 : 

" And when the bed was with the preest yblessed." 

The formula for this curious ceremony is thus given in the 
Manual for the use of Salisbury : " Nocte vero sequente 
cum sponsus et sponsa ad lectum pervenerint, accedat sa- 
cerdos et benedicat thalamum, diccns. Benedic, Domine, 
thalamum istum et omnes habitantes in eo ; ut in tua pace 
consistant, et in tua voluntate permaneant : et in tuo amore 
vivant et senescant et multiplicentur in longitudine dierum. 
Per Dominum. — Item benedictio super lectum. Benedic, 
Domine, hoc cubiculum, respice, quinon dermis neque dor- 
mitas. Qui custodis Israel, custodi famulos tuos in hoc lecto 
quiescentes ab omnibus fantasmaticis demonum illusionibus. 
Custodi eos vigilantes ut in preceptis tuis meditentur dor- 
mientes, et te per soporem sentiant ; ut hie et ubique de- 
pensionis tuae muniantur auxilio. Per Dominum. — Deinde 
fiat benedictio super eos in lecto tantum cum oremus, Be- 
nedicat Deus corpora vestra et animas vestras ; et det super 
eos benedictionem sicut benedixit Abraham, Isaac, et Jacob, 
Amen. His peractis aspergat eos aqua benedicta, et sic dis- 
cedat et dimittat eos in pace.'" 

In the French romance of Melusine, the bishop who mar- 
ries her to Raymondin blesses the nuptial-bed. The cere- 
mony is there presented in a very ancient cut, of which 
Douce has given a copy. The good prelate is sprinkling 
the parties with holy water. It appears that, occasionally, 



' See Douce's "Illustrations of Shakespeare," pp. 123, 124. 



MARRIAGE. 357 

during the benediction, the married couple only sat on the 
bed ; but they generally received a portion of the conse- 
crated bread and wine. It is recorded in France, that, on 
frequent occasions, the priest was improperly detained till 
midnight, while the wedding guests rioted in the luxuries 
of the table, and made use of language that was extremely 
ofTensive to the clergy. It was therefore ordained, in the 
year 1577, that the ceremony of blessing the nuptial-bed 
should for the future be performed in the day-time, or at 
least before supper, and in the presence of the bride and 
bridegroom, and of their nearest relations only. 

On the morning after the celebration of the marriage, it 
was formerly customary for friends to serenade a newly mar- 
ried couple, or to greet them with a morning song to bid 
them good-morrow. In "Othello" (iii. i) this custom is re- 
ferred to by Cassio, who, speaking of Othello and Desdemona, 
says to the musicians: 

" Masters, play here ; I will content your pains : 
Something that's brief; and bid, ' Good morrow, general.' " 

According to Cotgrave, the morning-song to a newly mar- 
ried woman was called the " hunt's up." It has been sug- 
gested that this may be alluded to by Juliet (iii. 5), who, 
when urging Romeo to make his escape, tells him : 

" Some say the lark and loathed toad change eyes ; 
O, now I would they had chang'd voices too ! 
Since arm from arm that voice doth us affray. 
Hunting thee hence with hunt's-up to the day. 
O, now be gone." 

In olden times torches were used at weddings — a practice, 
indeed, dating as far back as the time of the Romans. From 
the following lines in Herrick's " Hesperides," it has been 
suggested that the custom once existed in this country : 

" Upon a maid tliat dyed the day she was mar>yed. 
" That morne which saw me made a bride, 
The ev'ning witncst that I dy'd. 
Those holy lights, wherewith they guide 
Unto the bed the bashful bride, 



358 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

Serv'd but as tapers for to burne 
And light my reliques to their urne. 
This epitaph which here you see, 
Supply'd the Epithalamie." ' 

Shakespeare alludes to this custom in " i Henry VI." (iii. 2), 
where Joan of Arc, thrusting out a burning torch on the top 
of the tower at Rouen, exclaims : 

" Behold, this is the happy wedding torch, 
That joineth Rouen unto her countrymen." 

In " The Tempest," too (iv. i). Iris says: 

" no bed-right shall be paid 
Till Hymen's torch be lighted." 

According to a Roman marriage custom, the bride, on her 
entry into her husband's house, was prohibited from treading 
over his threshold, and lest she should even so much as 
touch it, she was always lifted over it. Shakespeare seems 
inadvertently to have overlooked this usage in " Coriolanus " 
(iv. 5), where he represents Aufidius as saying : 

" I lov'd the maid I married ; never man 
Sigh'd truer breath ; but that I see thee here. 
Thou noble thing ! more dances my rapt heart. 
Than when I first my wedded mistress saw 
Bestride my threshold." 

Lucan in his " Pharsalia " (lib. ii. 1. 359), says : 

" Translata vetuit contingere limina planta." 

Once more, Sunday appears to have been a popular day 
for marriages ; the brides of the Elizabethan dramas being 
usually represented as married on Sundays. In the " Tam- 
ing of the Shrew " (ii. i), Petruchio, after telling his future 
father-in-law " that upon Sunday is the wedding-day," and 
laughing at Katharina's petulant exclamation, " I'll see thee 
hanged on Sunday first," says : 

" Father, and wife, and gentlemen, adieu ; 
I will to Venice ; Sunday comes apace : — 
We will have rings, and things, and fine array ; 
And, kiss me, Kate, we will be married o' Sunday." 

' See Brand's " Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. ii. p. 159. 



MARRIAGE. 35^ 

Thus Mr. Jeaffreson, speaking of this custom in his " Brides 
and Bridals," rightly remarks : " A fashionable wedding, 
celebrated on the Lord's Day in London, or any part of 
England, would nowadays be denounced by religious people 
of all Christian parties. But in our feudal times, and long 
after the Reformation, Sunday was of all days of the week 
the favorite one for marriages. Long after the theatres had 
been closed on Sundays, the day of rest was the chief day 
for weddings with Londoners of every social class." 

Love-charms have from the earliest times been much in 
request among the credulous, anxious to gain an insight into 
their matrimonial prospects.' Li the " Merchant of Venice" 
(v. i), we have an allusion to the practice of kneeling and 
praying at wayside crosses for a happy marriage, in the pas- 
sage where Stephano tells how his mistress 

" doth stray about 
By holy crosses, where she kneels and prays 
For happy wedlock hours." 

The use of love-potions by a despairing lover, to secure 
the affections of another, was a superstitious practice much 
resorted to in olden times.^ This mode of enchantment, too, 
was formerly often employed in our own country, and Gay, 
in his " Shepherd's Week," relates how Hobnelia was guilty 
of this questionable practice : 

"As I was wont, I trudged, last market-day. 
To town with new-laid eggs, preserved in hay. 
I made my market long before 'twas night ; 
My purse grew heavy, and my basket light. 
Straight to the 'pothecary's shop I went, 
And in love-powder all my money spent. 
Behap what will, next Sunday after prayers, 
When to the ale-house Lubberkin repairs. 
These golden flics into his mug I'll throw. 
And soon the swain with fervent love shall glow." 

' See " Merry Wives of Windsor," iv. 2. 

' See Potter's " Antiquities of Greece ;" Brand's " Pop. Antiq.," vol. 
iii. p. 306. 



360 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

In the "Character of a Quack Astrologer," 1673, quoted 
by Brand, we are told how " he trappans a young heiress to 
run away with a footman, by persuading a young girl 'tis her 
destiny ; and sells the old and ugly philtres and love-powder 
to procure them sweethearts." Shakespeare has represented 
Othello as accused of winning Desdemona "by conjuration 
and mighty magic." Thus Brabantio (i. 2) says : 

" thou hast practised on her with foul charms ; 
Abus'd her dehcate youth with drugs, or minerals, 
That weaken motion." 

And in the following scene he further repeats the same 
charge against Othello : 

" She is abus'd, stol'n from me, and corrupted 
By spells and medicines bought of mountebanks; 
For nature so preposterously to err. 
Being not deficient, blind, or lame of sense. 
Sans witchcraft could not." 

Othello, however, in proving that he had won Desdemona 
only by honorable means, addressing the Duke, replies : 

" by your gracious patience, 
I will a round unvarnish'd tale deliver 
Of my whole course of love ; what drugs, what charms, 
What conjuration, and what mighty magic, — 
For such proceeding I am charg'd withal, — 
I won his daughter." 

It may have escaped the poet's notice that, by the Vene- 
tian law, the giving love-potions was held highly criminal, as 
appears in the code " Delia Promission del Malefico," cap. 
xvii., " Del Maleficii et Herbarie." 

A further allusion to this practice occurs in " A Midsum- 
mer-Night's Dream " (ii. i), where Puck and Oberon amuse 
themselves at Titania's expense.' 

An expression common in Shakespeare's day for any one 
born out of wedlock is mentioned by the Bastard in " King 
John" (i. i) : 

" In at the window, or else o'er the hatch." 

* See page 227. 



MARRIAGE. 361 

The old saying also that " Hanghig and wiving go by des- 
tiny" is quoted by Nerissa in the "Merchant of Venice " 
(ii,9). In " Much Ado About Nothing" (ii. i), Don Pedro 
makes use of an old popular phrase in asking Claudio : " When 
mean you to go to church?" referring to his marriage. 

A solemn and even melancholy air was often affected by 
the beaux of Queen Elizabeth's time, as a refined mark of 
gentility, a most sad and pathetic allusion to which custom 
is made by Arthur in " King John " (iv. i) : 

" Methinks, nobody should be sad but I : 
Yet, I remember, when I was in France, 
Young gentlemen would be as sad as night, 
Only for wantonness." ' 

There are frequent references to this fashion in our old 
writers. Thus, in Ben Jonson's " Every Man in His Humor" 
(i. 3), we read : " Why, I do think of it ; and I will be more 
proud, and melancholy, and gentlemanlike than I have been, 
I'll insure you." 

' See Nares's " Glossary'," vol. ii. p. 563. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

DEATH AND BURIAL. 

From a very early period there has been a belief in the 
existence of a power of prophecy at that period which pre- 
cedes death. It took its origin in the assumed fact that the 
soul becomes divine in the same ratio as its connection with 
the body is loosened. It has been urged in support of this 
theory that at the hour of death the soul is, as it were, on 
the confines of two worlds, and may possibly at the same 
moment possess a power which is both prospective and ret- 
rospective. Shakespeare, in " Richard II." (ii. i), makes the 
dying Gaunt exclaim, alluding to his nephew, the young and 
self-willed king : 

" Methinks I am a prophet new inspir'd, 
And thus, expiring, do foretell of him." 

Again, the brave Percy, in " i Henry IV." (v. 4), when in 
the agonies of death, expresses the same idea : 

" O, I could prophesy, 
But that the earthy and cold hand of death 
Lies on my tongue." 

We may also compare what Nerissa says of Portia's father 
in " Merchant of Venice " (i. 2), " Your father was ever vir- 
tuous ; and holy m.en, at their death, have good inspirations." 
Curious to say, this notion may be traced up to the time 
of Homer. Thus Patroclus prophesies the death of Hector 
(" Iliad," TT. 852): "You yourself are not destined to live long, 
for even now death is drawing nigh unto you, and a violent 
fate awaits you — about to be slain in fight by the hands of 
Achilles." Aristotle tells us that the soul, when on the point 
of death, foretells things about to happen. Others have 
sought for the foundation of this belief in the 49th chapter 



DEATH AND BURIAL. 



363 



of Genesis: "And Jacob called unto his sons, and said, 
Gather yourselves together, that I may tell you that which 

shall befall you in the last days And when Jacob had made 

an end of commanding his sons, he gathered up his feet into 
the bed, and yielded up the ghost, and was gathered unto his 
people." Whether, however, we accept this origin or not, 
at any rate it is very certain that the notion in question has 
existed from the earliest times, being alluded to also by 
Socrates, Xenophon, and Diodorus Siculus. It still lingers 
on in Lancashire and other parts of England. 

Among other omens of death may be mentioned high 
spirits, which have been supposed to presage impending 
death. Thus, in "Romeo and Juliet" (v. 3), Romeo ex- 
claims : 

" How oft, when men are at the point of death, 
Have they been merry ! which their keepers call 
A lightning before death." 

This idea is noticed by Ray, who inserts it as a proverb, 
" It's a lightening before death ;" and adds this note: " This 
is generally observed of sick persons, that a little before they 
die their pains leave them, and their understanding and 
memory return to them — as a candle just before it goes out 
gives a great blaze." It was also a superstitious notion that 
unusual mirth was a forerunner of adversity. Thus, in the 
last act of " Romeo and Juliet" (sc. i), Romeo comes on, 
saying : 

" If I may trust the flattering truth of sleep, 
My dreams presage some joyful news at hand : 
My bosom's lord sits lightly in his throne ; 
And all this day an unaccustom'd spirit 
Lifts me above the ground with cheerful thoughts." 

Immediately, however, a messenger enters to announce 
Juliet's death. 

In " Richard III." (iii. 2), Hastings is represented as rising 
in the morning in unusually high spirits. Stanley says: 

" The lords at Pomfret, when they rode from London, 
Were jocund, and suppos'd their state was sure, 



364 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

And they, indeed, had no cause to mistrust; 
But yet, you see, how soon the day o'ercast." 

This idea, it may be noted, runs throughout the whole scene. 
Before dinner-time, Hastings was beheaded. 

Once more, in " 2 Henry IV." (iv. 2), the same notion is 
alluded to in the following dialogue : 

" Westjno7'cIaiid. Health to my lord and gentle cousin, Mowbray. 

Mowbray. You wish me health in very happy season ; 
For I am, on the sudden, something ill. 

Archbishop. Against ill chances men are ever merry ; 
But heaviness foreruns the good event. 

Westmoreland. Therefore be merry, coz ; since sudden sorrow 
Serves to say thus, ' Some good thing comes to-morrow.' 

Archbishop. Believe me, I am passing light in spirit. 

Moivbray. So much the worse, if your own rule be true." 

Tytler, in his " History of Scotland," thus speaks of the 
death of King James I. : " On this fatal evening (Feb. 20, 
1437), the revels of the court were kept up to a late hour. 
The prince himself appears to have been in unusually gay 
and cheerful spirits. He even jested, if we may believe the 
contemporary m.anuscript, about a prophecy which had 
declared that a king that year should be slain." Shelley 
strongly entertained this superstition : " During all the time 
he spent in Leghorn, he was in brilliant spirits, to him a sure 
prognostic of coming evil." 

Again, it is a very common opinion that death announces 
its approach by certain mysterious noises, a notion, indeed, 
which may be traced up to the time of the Romans, who 
believed that the genius of death announced his approach 
by some supernatural warning. In " Troilus and Cressida " 
(iv. 4), Troilus says : 

" Hark ! you are call'd : some say, the Genius so 
Cries ' Come !' to him that instantly must die." 

This superstition was frequently made use of by writers of 
bygone times, and often served to embellish, with touch- 
ing pathos, their poetic sentiment. Thus Flatman, in some 
pretty lines, has embodied this thought : 



DEATH AND BURIAL. 365 

" My soul, just now about to take her flight, 
Into the regions of eternal night, 
Methinks I hear some gentle spirit say, 
Be not fearful, come away." 

Pope speaks in the same strain : 

" Hark ! they whisper, angels say, 
Sister spirit, come away.'' 

Shakespeare, too, further ahudes to this idea in "Macbeth" 
(ii. 3), where, it may be remembered, Lennox graphically 
describes how, on the awful night in which Duncan is so 
basely murdered : 

" Our chimneys were blown down ; and, as they say, 
Lamentings heard i' the air; strange screams of death ; 
And prophesying, with accents terrible. 
Of dire combustion, and confus'd events. 
New hatch'd to the woful time." 

As in Shakespeare's day, so, too, at the present time, there 
is perhaps no superstition so deeply rooted in the minds of 
many people as the belief in what are popularly termed 
''death-warnings." Modern folk-lore holds either that a 
knocking or rumbling in the floor is an omen of a death 
about to happen, or that dying persons themselves announce 
their dissolution to their friend.s in such strange sounds." 
Many families are supposed to have particular warnings, 
such as the appearance of a bird, the figure of a tall woman, 
etc. Such, moreover, are not confined to our own country, 
but in a variety of forms are found on the Continent. Ac- 
cording to another belief, it w^as generally supposed that 
when a man was on his death-bed the devil or his agents 
tried to seize his soul, if it should happen that he died with- 
out receiving the sacrament of the Eucharist, or without 
confessing his sins. Hence, in " 2 Henry VI." (iii. 3), the 
king says : 

" O.beat away the busy meddling fiend 
That lays strong siege unto this wretch's soul. 
And from his bosom purge this black despair." 

' Tylor's " Primitive Culture." 1873, ^'ol' '• P- 145- 



366 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



In the old Office books of the Church, these " busy med- 
dhng fiends " are often represented with great anxiety be- 
sieging the dying man ; but on the approach of the priest 
and his attendants, they are shown to display symptoms 
of despair at their impending discomfiture. Douce' quotes 
from an ancient manuscript book of devotion, written in the 
reign of Henry VI., the following prayer to St. George: 
"Judge for me whan the moste hedyous and damnable 
dragons of helle shall be redy to take my poore soule and 
engloute it in to theyr infernall belyes." 

Some think that the " passing-bell," which was formerly 
tolled for a person who was dying, was intended to drive 
away the evil spirit that might be hovering about to seize 
the soul of the deceased. Its object, however, was probably 
to bespeak the prayers of the faithful, and to serve as a sol- 
emn warning to the living. Shakespeare has given several 
touching allusions to it. Thus, in Sonnet Ixxi. he says: 

" No longer mourn for me when I am dead, 
Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell 
Give warning to the world that I am fled 
From this vile world." 

In " 2 Henry IV." (i. i), Northumberland speaks in the same 

strain : 

" Yet the first bringer of unwelcome news 
Hath but a losing office : and his tongue 
Sounds ever after as a sullen bell, 
Remember'd knolling a departing friend." 

We may quote a further allusion in "Venus and Adonis" 

(I- 701): 

" And now his grief may be compared well 
To one sore sick that hears the passing-bell." 

In a statute passed during the reign of Henry VIII., it is 
ordered " that clarks are to ring no more than the passing 
bell for poare people, nor less for an honest householder, 
and he be a citizen; nor for children, maydes, journeymen, 

* " Illustrations of Shakespeare," 1829, pp. 324-326. 



I 



DEATH AND BURIAL. 



367 



apprentices, day-labourers, or any other poare person." In 
1662, the Bishop of Worcester' asks, in his visitation charge : 
" Doth the parish clerk or sexton take care to admonish the 
living, by tolling of a passing-bell, of any that are dying, 
thereby to meditate of their own deaths, and to commend 
the other's weak condition to the mercy of God?" It was, 
also, called the " soul-bell," upon which Bishop Hall remarks : 
" We call it the soul-bell because it signifies the departure 
of the soul, not because it helps the passage of the soul." 
Ray, in his " Collection of Proverbs," has the following 
couplet : 

" When thou dost hear a toll or knell 
Then think upon thy passing-bell."' 

It was formerly customary to draw away the pillow from 
under the heads of dying persons, so as to accelerate their 
departure — an allusion to which we find in " Timon of 
Athens " (iv. 3), where Timon says : 

" Pluck stout men's pillows from below their heads." 

This, no doubt, originated in the notion that a person can- 
not die happily on a bed made of pigeons' feathers. Grose 
says : " It is impossible for a person to die whilst resting on 
a pillow stuffed with the feathers of a dove ; but that he 
will struggle with death in the most exquisite torture. The 
pillows of dying persons are therefore frequently taken away 
when they appear in great agonies, lest they may have pig- 
eon's feathers in them." Indeed, in Lancashire, this prac- 
tice is carried to such an extent that some will not allow 
dying persons to lie on a feather bed, because they hold that 
it very much increases their pain and suffering, and actually 
retards their departure." 

The departure of the human soul from this world, and its 
journey to its untried future, have become interwoven with 

1 " Annals of Worcester," 1845. 

•^ Harland and Wilkinson's " Lancashire Folk-Lore," 1869, p. 268 ; see 
" English Folk-Lore," 1878, pp. 99, 100 ; also " Notes and Queries," ist 
series, vol. iv. p. 133. 



268 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

an extensive network of superstitions, varying more or less 
in every country and tribe. Shakespeare has alluded to the 
numerous destinations of the disembodied spirit, enumerat- 
ing the many ideas prevalent in his time on the subject. In 
" Measure for Measure" (iii. i), Claudio thus speaks: 

" Ay, but to die, and go we know not where ; 
To lie in cold obstruction and to rot ; 
This sensible warm motion to become 
A kneaded clod ; and the delighted spirit 
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside 
In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice ; 
To be imprison'd in the viewless winds, 
And blown with restless violence round about 
The pendent world." ' 

We may compare also the powerful language of Othello 
(v. 2): 

" This look of thine will hurl my soul from heaven, 

And fiends will snatch at it. Cold, cold, my girl ! 

Even like thy chastity. — 

O cursed, cursed slave ! Whip me, ye devils, 

From the possession of this heavenly sight ! 

Blow me about in winds ! roast me in sulphur I 

Wash me in steep-down gulfs of liquid fire ! 

O Desdemona ! Desdemona ! dead !" 

Douce ^ says that in the former passage it is difficult to 
decide whether Shakespeare is alluding to the pains of hell 
or purgatory. Both passages are obscure, and have given 
rise to much criticism. It seems probable, however, that 
while partly referring to the notions of the time, relating to _ 
departed souls, Shakespeare has in a great measure incorpo-^ 
rated the ideas of what he had read in books of Catholic 
divinity. The passages quoted above remind us of the le- 
gend of St. Patrick's purgatory, where mention is made of a 
lake of ice and snow into which persons were plunged up to 
their necks; and of the description of hell given in the 
" Shepherd's Calendar:" 

' Cf. Milton's " Paradise Lost," v. 595-683. 

= See " Illustrations of Shakespeare," 1839. pp. 82, 83. 



DEATH AND BURIAL. 369 

" a great froste in a water rounes 
And after a bytter wynde comes 
Which gothe through the soules with eyre ; 
Fends with pokes pulle theyr flesshe ysondre, 
They fight and curse, and eche on other wonder." 

We cannot here enter, however, into the mass of mystic 
details respecting "the soul's dread journey' by caverns 
and rocky paths and weary plains, over steep and slippery 
mountains, by frail bank or giddy bridge, across gulfs or 
rushing rivers, abiding the fierce onset of the soul-destroyer 
or the doom of the stern guardian of the other world." Few 
subjects, indeed, have afforded greater scope for the imagina- 
tion than the hereafter of the human soul, and hence, as 
might be expected, numerous myths have been invented in 
most countries to account for its mysterious departure in 
the hour of death, from the world of living men to its un- 
seen, unknown home in the distant land of spirits. 

Shakespeare several times uses the word " limbo " in a 
general signification for hell, as in "Titus Andronicus" 
(iii. I): 

" As far from help as limbo is from bliss." 

And in " All's Well that Ends Well " (v. 3), Parolles says : 
" for, indeed, he was mad for her, and talked of Satan, and 
of limbo, and of furies, and I know not what." In " Hen- 
ry VIII." (v. 4), " in Limbo Patrum " is jocularly put for a 
prison ; and, again, in " Comedy of Errors " (iv. 2), " he's in 
Tartar limbo." " According to the schoolmen, Linibus Pa- 
trum was the place, bordering on hell, where the souls of 
the patriarchs and saints of the Old Testament remained 
till the death of Christ, who, descending into liell, set them 
free."* 

One of the punishments invented of old for the covetous 
and avaricious, in hell, was to have melted gold poured 
down their throats, to which allusion is made by Flaminius, 
in " Timon of Athens" (iii. i ), who, denouncing Lucullus 

' Tylor's " Primitive Culture," vol. ii. p. 46. 
' Dyce's " Glossary," p. 246. 

24 



370 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



for his mean insincerity towards his friend Timon, exclaims, 
on rejecting the bribe offered him to tell his master that he 
had not seen him : 

" May these add to the number that may scald thee ! 
Let molten coin be thy damnation." 

In the " Shepherd's Calendar," Lazarus declares himself 
to have seen covetous men and women in hell dipped in 
caldrons of molten lead. Malone quotes the following from 
an old black-letter ballad of " The Dead Man's Song :" 

" Ladles full of melted gold 
Were poured down their throats." 

Crassus was so punished by the Parthians.' 

There is possibly a further allusion to this imaginary pun- 
ishment in " Antony and Cleopatra " (ii. 5), where Cleopatra 
says to the messenger: 

" But, sirrah, mark, we use 
To say, the dead are well : bring it to that, 
The gold I give thee will I melt, and pour 
Down thy ill-uttering throat." 

According to a well-known superstition among sailors, it 
is considered highly unlucky to keep a corpse on board, in 
case of a death at sea. Thus, in Pericles " (iii. i), this piece 
of folk-lore is alluded to : 

" I Sailor. Sir, your queen must overboard ; the sea works high, the 
wind is loud, and will not lie till the ship be cleared of the dead. 

Pericles. That's your superstition. 

I Sailor. Pardon us, sir ; with us at sea it hath been still observed ; 
and we are strong in custom. Therefore briefly yield her; for she 
must overboard straight." 

It was also a popular opinion that death is delayed until 
the ebb of the tide — a superstition to which Mrs. Quickly 
refers in "Henry V." (ii. 3); speaking of Falstaff's death, 
she says: " 'A made a finer end, and went away, an it had 

' Singer's " Shakespeare," 1875, vol. viii. p. 291. 



DEATH AND EURIAL. 371 

been any christom child ; 'a parted even just between twelve 
and one, even at the turning o' the tide." Hence, in cases 
of sickness, many pretended that they could foretell the 
hour of the soul's departure. It may be remembered how 
Mr. Peggotty explained to David Copperfield, by poor Bar- 
kis's bedside, that "people can't die along the .coast except 
when the tide's pretty nigh out. They can't be born unless 
it's pretty nigh in — not properly born till flood. He's a-go- 
ing out with the tide — he's a-going out with the tide. It's 
ebb at half arter three, slack-water half an hour. If he lives 
till it turns he'll hold his own till past the flood, and go out 
with the next tide." Mr. Henderson' quotes from the par- 
ish register of Heslidon, near Hartlepool, the subjoined ex- 
tracts of old date, in which the state of the tide at the time 
of death is mentioned : 

" The xi'^' daye of Maye, A.D. 1595, at vi. of }'e clocke in 
the morninge, being full water, Mr. Henrye Mitford, of Hoo- 
1am, died at Newcastel, and was buried the xvi'*^ daie, being 
Sondaie, at evening prayer, the hired preacher maid ye ser- 
mon." 

" The xvii"' daie of Maie, at xii. of ye clock at noon, being 
lowe water, Mrs. Barbara Mitford died, and was buried the 
xviii''» daie of Maie, at ix. of the clocke. Mr. Holsworth 
maid ye sermon." 

According to Mr. Henderson, this belief is common along 
the east coast of England, from Northumberland to Kent. 
It has been suggested that there may be " some slight foun- 
dation for this belief in the change of temperature which un- 
doubtedly takes place on the change of tide, and which may 
act on the flickering spark of life, extinguishing it as the 
ebbing sea recedes." 

We may compare, too, the following passage in " 2 Flenry 
IV." (iv. 4), where Clarence, speaking of the approaching 
death of the king, says : 

"The river hath thrice flow'd, no ebb between; 
And the old folk, time's doting chronicles, 

' " Folk-Lore of Northern Counties," 1880, p. 58. 



372 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

Say it did so a little time before 

That our great grandsire, Edward, sick'd and died." 



This was an historical fact, having happened on October 12, 
1411. 

The prayers of the Church, which are used for the recovery 
of the sick, were, in the olden time, also supposed to have a 
morbific influence, to which Gloster attributes the death of 
the king in " i Henry VI." (i. i): 

" The church ! where is it ? Had not churchmen pray'd, 
His thread of life had not so soon decay 'd." 

Once more, the custom of closing the eyes at the moment 
of death is touchingly referred to in " Antony and Cleopatra " 
(v. 2), where Charmian may be supposed to close Cleopatra's 
eyes : 

" Downy windows, close ; 

And golden Phoebus never be beheld 

Of eyes again so royal." 

Passing on from that solemn moment in human life when 
the soul takes its flight from the fragile tenement of clay 
that contained it during its earthly existence, we find that, 
even among the lowest savages, there has generally been a 
certain respect paid to the dead body ; and, consequently, 
various superstitious rites have, from time to time, been 
associated with its burial, which has been so appropriately 
termed " the last act." While occasionally speaking of 
death, Shakespeare has not only pictured its solemnity in 
the most powerful and glowing language, but, as opportu- 
nity allowed, given us a slight insight into those customs 
that formerly prevailed in connection with the committal 
of the body to its final resting-place in the grave. At the 
present day, when there is an ever-growing tendency to dis- 
card and forget, as irrational and foolish, the customs of by- 
gone years, it is interesting to find chronicled, for all future 
time, in the immortal pages of our illustrious poet, those 
superstitious rites and social usages which may be said to 
have been most intimately identified with the age to which 
they belonged. One custom, perhaps, that will always re- 



DEATH AND BURIAL. 



Z7l 



tain its old hold among us — so long as we continue to bury 
the remains of our departed ones — is the scattering of flow- 
ers on their graves ; a practice, indeed, which may be traced 
up to pagan times. It is frequently mentioned by Shake- 
speare in some of his superb passages ; as, for instance, in 
" Cymbeline" (iv. 2), where Arviragus says : 

" With fairest flowers, 
Whilst summer lasts, and I live here, Fidele, 
I'll sweeten thy sad grave: thou shall not lack 
The flower that's like thy face, pale primrose, nor 
The azur'd hare-bell, like thy veins ; no, nor 
The leaf of eglantine, whom not to slander, 
Out-sweeten'd not thy breath. 

Yea, and furr'd moss besides, when flowers are none, 
To winter-ground thy corse." 

In " Hamlet " (iv. 5), the poor, bewildered Ophelia sings : 

" Larded with sweet flowers ; 
Which bewept to the grave did go 
With true-love showers." 

Then, further on (v. i), there is the affecting flower-strewing 
scene, where the Queen, standing over the grave of Ophelia, 
bids her a long farewell : 

" Sweets to the sweet : farewell ! 
I hop'd thou should'st have been my Hamlet's wife ; 
I thought thy bride-bed to have deck'd, sweet maid. 
And not have strew'd thy grave." 

In " Romeo and Juliet " (iv. 5), Capulet says: 

"Our bridal flowers serve for a buried corse." 

And further on (v. 3) the Page says : 

" He came with flowers to strew his lady's grave.'" 

Once more, in '" Pericles" (iv. i), Marina is introduced, en- 
tering with a basket of flowers, uttering these sad words : 



' Cf. " Winter's Tale," iv. 4. 



374 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

" No, I will rob Tellus of her weed, 
To strew thy green with flowers ; the yellows, blues, 
The purple violets, and marigolds, 
Shall, as a carpet, hang upon thy grave. 
While summer days do last." 

Flowers, which so soon droop and wither, are, indeed, 
sweet emblems of that brief life which is the portion of 
mankind in this world, while, at the same time, their ex- 
quisite beauty is a further tj^pe of the glory that awaits the 
redeemed hereafter, when, like fair flowers, they shall burst 
forth in unspeakable grandeur on the resurrection morn. 
There is a pretty custom observed in South Wales on Palm 
Sunday, of spreading fresh flowers upon the graves of 
friends and relatives, the day being called Flowering Sun- 
day. 

The practice of decorating the corpse is mentioned by 
many old writers. In "Romeo and Juliet" (iv. 5), Friar 
Laurence says : 

" Dry up your tears, and stick your rosemary 
On this fair corse ; and, as the custom is, 
In all her best array bear her to church." 

Queen Katharine, in " Henry VIII." (iv. 2), directs: 

" When I am dead, good wench. 
Let me be us'd with honour : strew me over 
With maiden flowers." 

It was formerly customary, in various parts of England, to 
have a garland of flowers and sweet herbs carried before a 
maiden's coffin, and afterwards to suspend it in the church. 
In allusion to this practice, the Priest, in " Hamlet" (v. i), 
says : 

" Yet here she is allow'd her virgin crants. 
Her maiden strewments, and the bringing home 
Of bell and burial." 

— crants' meaning garlands. It may be noted that no other 

' The word in German is krajtz, in other Teutonic dialects kra?tis, 
kratis, and crance — ^the latter being Lowland Scotch — and having 
cransies for plural. Clark and Wright's " Hamlet," 1876, p. 216. 



DEATH AND BURIAL. 



75 



instance has been found of this word in English. These 
garlands are thus described by Gay : 

"To her sweet mem'ry flow'ry garlands strung. 
On her now empty seat aloft were hung." 

Nichols, in his "History of Lancashire" (vol. ii. pt. i. 
p. 382), speaking of Waltham, in Framland Hundred, says: 
" In this church, under every arch, a garland is suspended, 
one of which is customarily placed there whenever any 
young unmarried woman dies." Brand' tells us he saw in 
the churches of Wolsingham and Stanhope, in the county 
of Durham, specimens of these garlands; the form of a 
woman's glove, cut in white paper, being hung in the cen- 
tre of each of them. 

The funerals of knights and persons of rank were, in 
Shakespeare's day, performed with great ceremony and 
ostentation. Sir John Hawkins observes that "the sword, 
the helmet, the gauntlets, spurs, and tabard are still hung 
over the grave of every knight." In " Hamlet " (iv. 5), La- 
ertes speaks of this custom : 

" His means of death, his obscure burial, — 
No trophj', sword, nor hatchment, o'er his bones. 
No noble rite, nor formal ostentation, — 
Cry to be heard, as 'twere from heaven to earth. 
That I must call't in question." 

Again, in " 2 Henry VI." (iv. 10), Iden says : 

" Is"t Cade that I have slain, that monstrous traitor? 
Sword, I will hallow thee for this thy deed, 
And hang thee o'er my tomb when I am dead." 

The custom of bearing the dead body in its ordinary ha- 
biliments, and with the face uncovered — a practice referred 
to in "Romeo and Juliet" (iv. i) — appears to have been 
peculiar to Italy : 

"Then, as the manner of our country is. 
In thy best robes uncover'd on the bier, 

* " Pop. Antiq." vol. ii. p. 303. 



n^ 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

Thou shalt be borne to that same ancient vault 
Where all the kindred of the Capulets lie." 



In Coryat's "Crudities" (1776, vol. ii. p. 27) the practice 
is thus described : " The burials are so strange, both in Ven- 
ice and all other cities, towns, and parishes of Italy, that 
they differ not only from England, but from all other na- 
tions whatever in Christendom. For they carry the corse 
to church with the face, hands, and feet all naked, and wear- 
ing the same apparel that the person wore lately before he 
died, or that which he craved to be buried in ; which apparel 
is interred together with the body.'" Singer^ says that 
Shakespeare no doubt had seen this custom particularly de- 
scribed in the " Tragicall History of Romeus and Juliet :" 

" Another use there is, that, whosoever dies, 
Borne to the church, with open face, upon the bier he lies, 
In wonted weed attir'd, not wrapt in winding sheet." 

He alludes to it again in Ophelia's song, in " Hamlet '* 

(iv.5): 

"They bore him barefac'd on the bier." 

It was, in bygone times, customary to bury the Danish 
kings in their armor; hence the remark of Hamlet (i. 4), 
when addressing the Ghost : 

" What may this mean, 
That thou, dead corse, again, in complete steel, 
Revisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon. 
Making night hideous .^" 

Shakespeare was probably guilty of an anachronism in 
" Coriolanus " (v. 6) when he makes one of the lords say : 

" Bear from hence his body, 
And mourn you for him : let him be regarded 
As the most noble corse that ever herald 
Did follow to his urn," 

the allusion being to the public funeral of English princes, 

1 See Staunton's " Shakespeare," 1864, vol. i. p. 305. 
"^ " Shakespeare," 1875, vol. ix. pp. 209, 210. 



DEATH AND BURIAL. 377 

at the conclusion of which a herald proclaimed the style of 
the deceased. 

We may compare what Queen Katharine says in " Henry 
Vin."(iv. 2): 

" After my death I wish no other herald. 
No other speaker of my Hving actions, 
To keep my honour from corruption, 
But such an honest chronicler as Griffith." 

It seems to have been the fashion, as far back as the thir- 
teenth century, to ornament the tombs of eminent persons 
with figures and inscriptions on plates of brass; hence, in 
" Love's Labour's Lost" (i. i), the King says: 

" Let fame, that all hunt after in their lives, . 
Live register'd upon our brazen tombs." 

In "Much Ado About Nothing" (v. i), Leonato, speak- 
ing of his daughter's death, says : 

" Hang her an epitaph upon her tomb, 
And sing it to her bones : sing it to-night." 

And also in a previous scene (iv. i) this graceful custom is 
noticed : 

" Maintain a mourning ostentation. 
And on your family's old monument 
Hang mournful epitaphs." 

It was also the custom, in years gone by, on the death of an 
eminent person, for his friends to compose short laudatory 
verses, epitaphs, etc., and to affix them to the hearse or 
grave with pins, wax, paste, etc. Thus, in " Henry V." (i. 2), 
King Henry declares: 

" Either our history shall with full mouth 
Speak freely of our acts, or else our grave. 
Like Turkish mute, shall have a tongueless mouth. 
Not worshipp'd with a waxen epitaph," 

meaning, .says Gifford, •' I will either have my full history 
recorded with glory, or lie in an undisturbed grave ; not 



378 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



merely without an inscription sculptured in stone, but un- 
worshipped, unhonoured, even by a waxen epitaph."' 

We may also compare what Lucius says in " Titus An- 
dronicus" (i. i) : 

" There lie thy bones, sweet Mutius, with thy friends, 
Till we with trophies do adorn thy tomb !" 

The custom was still general when Shakespeare lived ; many 
fine and interesting examples existing in the old Cathedral 
of St. Paul's, and other churches of London, down to the 
time of the great fire, in the form of pensil-tables of wood 
and metal, painted or engraved with poetical memorials, 
suspended against the columns and walls. 

" Feasts of the Dead," which have prevailed in this and 
other countries from the earliest times, are, according to some 
antiquarians, supposed to have been borrowed from the ccena 
feralis of the Romans — an offering, consisting of milk, honey, 
wine, olives, and strewed flowers, to the ghost of the deceased. 
In a variety of forms this custom has prevailed among most 
nations — the idea being that the spirits of the dead feed on 
the viands set before them ; hence the rite in question em- 
braced the notion of a sacrifice. In Christian times, how- 
ever, these funeral offerings have passed into commemora- 
tive banquets, under which form they still exist among us. 
In allusion to these feasts, Hamlet (i. 2), speaking of his 
mother's marriage, says : 

" The funeral bak'd meats 
Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables." 

Again, in "Romeo and Juliet" (iv. 5), Capulet narrates 
how : 

"All things that we ordained festival. 
Turn from their office to black funeral : 
Our instruments, to melancholy bells ; 
Our wedding cheer, to a sad burial feast." 

Mr. Tylor," in discussing the origin of funeral feasts, and 

' Notes on " Jonson's Works," vol. ix. p. 58. 
- " Primitive Culture," vol. ii. p. 43. 



DEATH AND BURIAL. 



379 



in tracing their origin back to the savage and barbaric times 
of the institution of feast of departed souls, says we may find 
a lingering survival of this old rite in the doles of bread and 
drink given to the poor at funerals, and " soul-mass cakes," 
which peasant girls beg for at farmhouses, with the tradi- 
tional formula, 

" Soul, soul, for a soul cake. 
Pray you, mistress, a soul cake." ' 

In the North of England the funeral feast is called an 
" arval," and the loaves that are sometimes distributed 
among the poor are termed " arval bread." 

Among other funeral customs mentioned by Shakespeare, 
may be mentioned his allusion to the burial service. Origi- 
nally, before the reign of Edward VI., it was the practice for 
the priest to throw earth on the body in the form of a cross, 
and then to sprinkle it with holy water. Thus, in the 
" Winter's Tale " (iv. 4), the Shepherd says : 

" Some hangman must put on my shroud, and lay me 
Where no priest shovels in dust," 

implying, " I must be buried as a common malefactor, out 
of the pale of consecrated ground, and without the usual 
rites of the dead " — a whimsical anachronism, as Mr. Douce" 
points out, when it is considered that the old Shepherd was 
a pagan, a worshipper of Jupiter and Apollo. 

In "Antony and Cleopatra" (i. 3), we find an allusion to 
the lachrymatory vials filled with tears which the Romans 
were in the habit of placing in the tomb of a departed friend. 
Cleopatra sorrowfully exclaims : 

" O most false love ! 
Where be the sacred vials thou shouldst fill 
With sorrowful water ? Now I see, I see. 
In Fulvia's death, how mine receiv'd shall be." 



' See " British Popular Customs," p. 404 ; Brand's " Pop. Antiq.," 
1849, vol. ii. pp. 237, 246 ; Douce's " Illustrations of Shakespeare," 1839, 

P- 439- 

^ See Douce's " Illustrations of Shakespeare," 1839, p. 222. 



38o 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



This is another interesting instance of Shakespeare's 
knowledge of the manners of distant ages, showing how 
varied and extensive his knowledge was, and his skill in ap- 
plying it whenever occasion required. 

The winding or shrouding sheet, in which the body was 
wrapped previous to its burial, is alluded to in " Hamlet" 
(v. i), in the song of the clown : 

" A pick-axe, and a spade, a spade, 
For and a shrouding sheet : 
O, a pit of clay for to be made 
For such a guest is meet." 

Again, in "A Midsummer-Night's Dream" (v. i). Puck 
says : 

" the screech-owl, screeching loud, 
Puts the wretch that lies in woe 
In remembrance of a shroud." 

Ophelia speaks of the shroud as white as the mountain 
snow (" Hamlet," iv. 5). The following song, too, in " Twelfth 
Night" (ii. 4), mentions the custom of sticking yew in the 
shroud : 

" Come away, come away, death. 

And in sad cypress let me be laid ; 
Fly away, fly away, breath : 

I am slain by a fair cruel maid. 

My shroud of white, stuck all with yew, 

O prepare it ! 
My part of death, no one so true 
Did share it !" 

To quote two further illustrations. Desdemona (" Othello," 
iv. 2) says to Emilia: " Lay on my bed my wedding-sheets," 
and when in the following scene Emilia answers: 

" I have laid those sheets you bade me on the bed," 

Desdemona adds : 

" If I do die before thee, pr'thee, shroud me 
In one of those same sheets " 



DEATH AND BURIAL. 381 

— a wish, indeed, which her cruel fate so speedily caused to 
be realized. And in " 3 Henry VI." (i. i) we have King 
Henry's powerful words : 

" Think'st thou, that I will leave my kingly throne, 
Wherein my grandsire and my father sat ? 
No : first shall war unpeople this my realm ; 
Ay, and their colours, — often borne in France, 
And now in England, to our heart's great sorrow, — 
Shall be my winding-sheet." 

The custom, still prevalent, of carrying the dead to the 
grave with music — a practice which existed in the primitive 
church — to denote that they have ended their spiritual war- 
fare, and are become conquerors, formerly existed very gen- 
erally in this country.^ In " Cymbeline " (iv. 2), Arviragus 
says : 

" And let us, Polydore, though now our voices 
Have got the mannish crack, sing him to the ground, 
As once our mother; use like note and words, 
Save that Euriphile must be Fidele." 

The tolling of bells at funerals is referred to in " Hamlet " 
(v. i), where the priest says of Ophelia : 

"she is allow'd her virgin crants. 
Her maiden strewments, and the bringing home 
Of bell and burial." 

It has been a current opinion for centuries that places of 
burial are haunted with spectres and apparitions — a notion, 
indeed, that prevailed as far back as the times of heathenism. 
Ovid speaks of ghosts coming out of their sepulchres and 
wandering about ; and Vergil, quoting the popular opinion 
of his time, tells us how Moeris could call the ghosts out of 
their sepulchres (" Bucol." viii. 98) : 

" Moerim, saepe animas imis excire sepulchris, 
Atque satas alio vidi traducere messis." 

' See Brand's " Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. ii. pp. 267-270. 



382 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



Indeed, the idea of the ghost remaining near the corpse is 
of world-wide prevalence; and as Mr. Tylor' points out, 
"through all the changes of religious thought from first to 
last, in the course of human history, the hovering ghosts of 
the dead make the midnight burial-ground a place where 
men's flesh creeps with terror," In " A Midsummer-Night's 
Dream " (v. i). Puck declares : 

" Now it is the time of night, 

That the graves, all gaping wide, 
Every one lets forth his sprite. 

In the church-way paths to glide." 

In the same play, too (iii. 2), Puck, speaking of " Aurora's 
harbinger," says : 

" At whose approach, ghosts, wandering here and there. 
Troop home to churchyards : damned spirits all, 
That in cross-ways and floods have burial, 
Already to their wormy beds are gone ; 
For fear lest day should look their shames upon." 

In this passage two curious superstitions are described ; the 
ghosts of self-murderers, who are buried in cross-roads, and 
of those who have been drowned at sea, being said to wan- 
der for a hundred years, owing to the rites of sepulture hav- 
ing never been properly bestowed on their bodies. 
We may further compare Hamlet's words (iii. 2) : 

" 'Tis now the very witching time of night, 
When churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out 
Contagion to this world." 

From the earliest period much importance has been at- 
tached to the position of the grave, the popular direction 
being from east to west, that from north to south being 
regarded as not only dishonorable, but unlucky. Thus, in 
"Cymbeline" (iv. 2), Guiderius, when arranging about the 
apparently dead body of Imogen, disguised in man's apparel, 

says : 

" Nay, Cadwal, we must lay his head to the east ; 
My father had a reason for't." 

* " Primitive Culture," vol. ii. p. 30. 



I 



DEATH AND BURIAL. 



383 



Indeed, the famous antiquary Hearnc had such precise 
views in this matter that he left orders for his grave to be 
made straight by a compass, due east and west. This cus- 
tom was practised by the ancient Greeks, and thus, as Mr. 
Tylor points out,' it is not to late and isolated fancy, but to 
the carrying on of ancient and widespread solar ideas, that 
we trace the well-known legend that the body of Christ was 
laid with the head towards the west, thus looking eastward, 
and the Christian usage of digging graves east and west, 
which prevailed through mediaeval times, and is not yet for- 
gotten. The rule of laying the head to the west, and its 
meaning that the dead shall rise looking towards the east, 
are perfectly stated in the following passage from an eccle- 
siastical treatise of the i6th century:* "Debet autem quis 
sic sepeliri ut capite ad occidentem posito, pedes dirigat ad 
Orientem, in quo quasi ipsa positione orat : et innuit quod 
promptus est, ut de occasu festinet ad ortum : de mundo ad 
seculum."^ 

Within old monuments and receptacles for the dead per- 
petual lamps were supposed to be lighted up, an allusion to 
which is made by Pericles (iii. i), who, deploring the un- 
timely death of Thaisa at sea, and the superstitious demand 
made by the sailors that her corpse should be thrown over- 
board, says : 

" Nor have I time 
To give thee hallow'd to thy grave, but straight 
Must cast thee, scarcely coffin'd, in the ooze ; 
Where, for a monument upon thy bones, 
And aye-remaining lamps, the belching whale 
And humming water must o'erwhelm thy corpse, 
Lying with simple shells." 



' " Primitive Culture," 1873, vol. ii. p. 423. 

■■' Durandus, " De Officio Mortuorum,"' lib. vii. chap. 35-39. 

^ Dr. Johnson thought the words of the clown in " Hamlet" (v. i) 
" make her grave straight," meant, " make her grave from cast to west, 
in a direct line parallel to the church." This interpretation seems 
improbable, as the word straight in the sense of immediately occurs 
frequently in Shakespeare's plays. 



384 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



Again, in " Troilus and Cressida" (iii. 2), we find a further 
reference in the words of Troikis : 

" O, that I thought it could be in a woman, 
To feed for aye her lamp and flames of love." 

Pope, too, in his " Eloisa to Abelard," has a similar allusion 
(1. 261, 262): 

" Ah, hopeless lasting flames, like those that burn 
To light the dead, and warm th' unfruitful urn !" 

D'Israeli, in his " Curiosities of Literature," thus explains 
this superstition : " It has happened frequently that inquisi- 
tive men, examining with a flambeau ancient sepulchres 
which have just been opened, the fat and gross vapors en- 
gendered by the corruption of dead bodies kindled as the 
flambeau approached them, to the great astonishment of the 
spectators, who frequently cried out ' A miracle !' This sud- 
den inflammation, although very natural, has given room to 
believe that these flames proceeded from perpetual lamps, 
which some have thought were placed in the tombs of the 
ancients, and which, they said, were extinguished at the 
moment that these tombs opened, and were penetrated by 
the exterior air." Mr. Dennis, however, in his " Cities and 
Cemeteries of Etruria" (1878, vol. ii. p. 404), says that the 
use of sepulchral lamps by the ancients is well known, and 
gave rise to the above superstition. Sometimes lamps were 
kept burning in sepulchres long after the interment, as in 
the case of the Ephesian widow described by Petronius 
("Satyr," c. 13), who replaced the lamp placed in her hus- 
band's tomb. 

A common expression formerly applied to the dead occurs 
in the " Winter's Tale " (v. i), where Dion asks : 

" What were more holy, 
Than to rejoice the former queen is well.'"' 

So in " Antony and Cleopatra " (ii. 5) : 



DEATH AND BURIAL. 385 

"Messenger. First, madam, he is well. 

Cleopatra. Why, there's more gold. 

But, sirrah, mark, we use 
To say, the dead are well." ' 

Lastly, commentators have differed as to the meaning of 
the words of JuHa in the "Two Gentlemen of Verona" 
(i. 2) : 

" I see you have a month's mind to them." 

Douce says she refers to the mind or remembrance days of 
our popish ancestors ; persons in their wills having often 
directed that in a month, or at some other specific time, some 
solemn office, as a mass or a dirge, should be performed for 
the repose of their souls. Thus Ray quotes a proverb : " To 
have a month's mind to a thing," and mentions the above 
custom. For a further and not improbable solution of this 
difficulty, the reader may consult Dyce's '' Glossary " (p. 277). 

' See Malone's note, Variorum edition, xiv\ 400. 
25 



CHAPTER XV. 

RINGS AND PRECIOUS STONES. 

From a very early period, rings and precious stones have 
held a prominent place in the traditionary lore, customs, 
and superstitions of most nations. Thus, rings have been 
supposed "to protect from evil fascinations of every kind, 
against the evil eye, the influence of demons, and dangers 
of every possible character ; though it was not simply in 
the rings themselves that the supposed virtues existed, but 
in the materials of which they were composed — in some 
particular precious stones that were set in them as charms 
or talismans, in some device or inscription on the stone, or 
some magical letters engraved on the circumference of the 
ring." ' Rings, too, in days gone by, had a symbolical im- 
portance. Thus, it was anciently the custom for every 
monarch to have a ring, the temporary possession of which 
invested the holder with the same authority as the owner 
himself could exercise. Thus, in " Henry VHI." (v. i), Ave 
have the king's ring given to Cranmer, and presented by him 
(sc. 2), as a security against the machinations of Gardiner 
and others of the council, who were plotting to destroy 
him. Thus the king says : 

" If entreaties 
Will render you no remedy, this ring 
Deliver them, and your appeal to us 
There make before them." 

This custom, too, was not confined to royalty, for in 
"Richard H." (ii. 2), the Duke of York gives this order 
to his servant : 

' Jones's " Finger-Ring Lore," 1877, p. 91. 



387 



RINGS AND PRECIOTTS STONES. 

I 

" Sirrah, get thee to Plashy, to my sister Gloster ; 
Bid her send me presently a thousand pound : — 
Hold, take my ring.'' 

There is an interesting relic of the same custom still kept 
up at Winchester College.' When the captain of the school 
petitions the head-master for a holiday, and obtains it, he 
receives from him a ring, in token of the indulgence granted, 
which he wears during the holiday, and returns to the head- 
master when it is over. The inscription upon the ring was, 
formerly, " Potentiam fero, geroque." It is now " Commen- 
dat rarior usus" (Juvenal, " Sat." xi. 208). 

Token Rings date from very early times. Edward I., in 
1297, presented Margaret, his fourth daughter, with a golden 
pyx, in which he deposited a ring, as a token of his unfail- 
ing love. 

In " Richard III." (i. 2) when Gloster brings his hasty 
wooing to a conclusion, he gives the Lady Anne a ring, 
saying : 

" Look, how my ring encompasseth thy finger. 
Even so thy breast encloseth my poor heart ; 
Wear both of them, for both of them are thine." 

In " Cymbeline " (i. i) Imogen gives Posthumus a ring 
when they part, and he presents her with a bracelet in ex- 
change : 

" Look here, love ; 
This diamond was my mother's ; take it, heart; 
But keep it till you woo another wife. 
When Imogen is dead. 

PosiJniinus. How ! how ! another ? — 
You gentle gods, give me but this I have. 
And sear up my embracements from a next 
With bonds of death I Remain, remain thou here, 

{Putting on the ring) 
While sense can keep it on." 

Yet he afterwards gives it up to lachimo (ii. 4) — upon a 
false representation — to test his wife's honor : 

' Wordsworth's " Shakespeare and the Bible," 1880, p. 283. 



388 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

" Here, take this too ; 
It is a basilisk unto mine eye. 
Kills me to look on't." 

The exchange of rings, a solemn mode of private contract 
between lovers, we have already referred to in the chapter on 
Marriage, a practice alluded to in the " Two Gentlemen of 
Verona" (ii. 2), where Julia gives Proteus a ring, saying: 

" Keep this remembrance for thy Julia's sake ;" 

and he replies : 

" Why, then we'll make exchange : here, take you this." 

Dcatlt s-Jicad rings. Rings engraved with skulls and skel- 
etons were not necessarily mourning rings, but were also 
worn by persons who affected gravity ; and, curious to say, 
by the procuresses of Elizabeth's time. Biron, in " Love's 
Labour's Lost" (v. 2), refers to "a death's face in a ring;" 
and we may quote Falstaff's words in " 2 Henry IV." (ii. 4): 
" Peace, good Doll ! do not speak like a death's head ; do not 
bid me remember mine end." We may compare the follow- 
ing from "The Chances" (i. 5), by Beaumont and Fletcher: 

" As they keep deaths' heads in rings, 
To cry ' memento ' to me." 

According to Mr. Tairholt, " the skull and skeleton decora- 
tions for rings first came into favor and fashion at the ob- 
sequious court of France, when Diana of Poictiers became 
the mistress of Henry H. At that time she was a widow, 
and in mourning, so black and white became fashionable 
colors; jewels were formed like funeral memorials; golden 
ornaments, shaped like coffins, holding enamelled skeletons, 
hung from the neck; watches, made to fit in little silver 
skulls, were attached to the waists of the denizens of a 
court that alternately indulged in profanity or piety, but who 
mourned for show.'" 

Posy-rings were formerly much used, it having been cus- 

^ See Jones's " Finger-Ring Lore," 1877, p. 372. 



RINGS AND PRECIOUS STONES. 389 

tomary to inscribe a motto or " posy " within the hoop of 
the betrothal ring. Thus, in the " Merchant of Venice " 
(v. i), Gratiano, when asked by Portia the reason of his 
quarrel with Nerissa, answers : 

/ ^/ 
" About a hoop of gold, a paltry ring / -^ 

That she did give me ; whose posy was 
For all the world like cutlers' poetry 
Upon a knife, ' Love me, and leave me not.' " 

In "As You Like It" (iii. 2), Jaques tells Orlando, "You 
are full of pretty answers. Have you not been acquainted 
with goldsmiths' wives, and conned them out of rings?" 
Again, " Hamlet " (iii. 2) asks : 

" Is this a prologue, or the posy ol a ring }" 

Many of our old writers allude to the posy-rings. Thus Her- 
rick, in his " Hesperides," says : 

" What posies for our wedding rings, 
What gloves we'll give, and ribbonings." 

Henry VIII. gave Anne of Cleves a ring with the following 
posy : " God send me well to kepe ;" a most unpropitious 
alliance, as the king expressed his dislike to her soon after 
the marriage. 

Thumb -rings. These were generally broad gold rings 
worn on the thumb by important personages. Thus Fal- 
staff (" I Henry IV." ii. 4) bragged that, in his earlier years, 
he had been so slender in figure as to " creep into an alder- 
man's thumb-ring;" and a ring thus worn — probably as 
more conspicuous — appears to have been considered as ap- 
propriate to the customary attire of a civic dignitary at a 
much later period. A character in the Lord Mayor's Show, 
in 1664, is described as "habited like a grave citizen — gold 
girdle, and gloves hung thereon, rings on his fingers, and a 
seal ring on his thumb." ' Chaucer, in his " Squire's Tale," 
says of the rider of the brazen horse who advanced into the 

' See Jones's " Finger-Ring Lore," 1877, p. 88. 




390 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. . 

hall, Cambuscan, that " upon his thumb he had of gold a 
ring." In " Romeo and Juliet" (i. 4), Mercutio speaks of the 

"agate stone 
On the forefinger of an alderman." 

It has been suggested that Shakespeare, in the following 
passage, alludes to the annual celebration, at Venice, of the 
Avedding of the Doge with the Adriatic, when he makes 
Othello say (i. 2) : 

" But that I love the gentle Desdemona, 
I would not my unhoused free condition 
Put into circumscription and confine 
For the sea's worth.'' 

This custom, it is said, was instituted by Pope Alexander 
III., who gave the Doge a gold ring from his own finger, in 
token of the victory by the Venetian fleet, at Istria, over 
Frederick Barbarossa, in defence of the Pope's quarrel. 
When his holiness gave the ring, he desired the Doge to 
throw a similar ring into the sea every year on Ascension 
Day, in commemoration of the event. 

Agate. This stone was frequently cut to represent the 
human form, and was occasionally worn in the hat by gal- 
lants. In " 2 Henry IV." (i. 2) Falstafif says : " I was never 
manned with an agate till now" — meaning, according to 
Johnson, "had an agate for my man," was waited on by 
an agate. 

Carbjinclc. The supernatural lustre of this gem' is sup- 
posed to be described in '^ Titus Andronicus" {ii. 3), where, 
speaking of the ring on the finger of Bassianus, Martins says: 

"Upon his bloody finger he doth wear 
A precious ring, that lightens all the hole, 
Which, like a taper in some monument, 
Doth shine upon the dead man's earthy cheeks, 
And shows the ragged entrails of the pit." 

In Drayton's "Muses' Elysium" ("Nymphal," ix.) it is 
thus eulogized : 

* See Sir Thomas Browne's " Vulgar Errors." 



RINGS AND PRECIOUS STONES. 3qI 

. " That admired mighty stone, 
The carbuncle that's named, 
Which from it such a flaming hght 

And radiancy ejecteth, 
That in the very darkest night 
The eye to it directeth."' 

Milton, speaking of the cobra, says : 

" His head 
Crested aloof, and carbuncle his eyes." 

John Norton,' an alchemist in the reign of Edward IV., 
wrote a poem entitled the " Ordinal," or a manual of the 
chemical art. One of his projects, we are told, was a bridge 
of gold over the Thames, crowned with pinnacles of gold, 
which, being studded with carbuncles, would diffuse a blaze 
of light in the dark. Among the other references to it giv- 
en by Shakespeare may be mentioned one in " Henr}- VIII." 
(ii. 3), where the Princess Elizabeth is .spoken of as 

" a gem 
To lighten all this isle." 

7\nd Hamlet (ii. 2) uses the phrase, " With eyes like car- 
buncles." 

Chrysolite. This stone was supposed to possess peculiar 
virtues, and, according to Simon Maiolus, in his " Dierum 
Caniculares" (1615-19), Thetel the Jew, who wrote a book. 
" De Sculpturiis," mentions one naturally in the form of a 
woman, which was potent against fascination of all kinds. 
" Othello " (v. 2) thus alludes to this stone in reference to his 

wife : 

" Nay, had she been true, 
If heaven would make me such another world / -• 

Of one entire and perfect chry-solite, 1 y^ 

I'd not have sold her for it." 

Pearls. The Eastern custom of powdering sovereigns at 
their coronation with gold-dust and seed-pearl is alluded to 
in "Antony and Cleopatra"' (ii. 5): 

' Jones's " Precious Stones," 1880, p. 62. '. : 

- Sec Singer's " Shakespeare," vol. x. p. 213. 



392 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

" I'll set thee in a shower of gold, and hail 
Rich pearls upon thee.'" 



So Milton (" Paradise Lost," ii. 4) : 

" The gorgeous East, with liberal hand. 
Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold." 

Again, to swallow a pearl in a draught seems to have 
been common to royal and mercantile prodigality. In 
"Hamlet" (v. 2) the King says: 

" The king shall drink to Hamlet's better breath ; 
And in the cup an union' shall he throw." 

Further on Hamlet himself asks, tauntingly : 

" Here, thou incestuous, murderous, damned Dane, 
Drink off this potion. Is thy union here }" 

Malone, as an illustration of this custom, quotes from' the 
second part of Heywood's " If You Know Not Me You 
Know Nobody:" 

" Here sixteen thousand pound at one clap goes 
Instead of sugar. Gresham drinks this pearl 
Unto the queen, his mistress." 

In former times powdered pearls were considered invalu- 
able for stomach complaints; and Rondeletius tells us that 
they were supposed to possess an exhilarating quality ; 
" Uniones quae a conchis, et valde cordiales sunt." 

Much mystery was, in bygone days, thought to hang over 
the origin of pearls, and, according to the poetic Orientals," 
" Every year, on the sixteenth day of the month Nisan, the 
pearl oysters rise to the sea and open their shells, in order 
to receive the rain which falls at that time, and the drops 
thus caught become pearls." Thus, in " Richard III." (iv. 4) 
the king says : 

"The liquid drops of tears that you have shed 
Shall come again, transform'd to orient pearl, 

1 A union is a precious pearl, remarkable for its size. 

^ See Jones's " History and Mystery of Precious Stones," p. 116. 



RINGS AND PRECIOUS STONES. 

Advantaging their loan with interest 
Of ten times double gain of happiness." 



393 



Moore, in one of his Melodies, notices this pretty notion: 

" And precious the tear as that rain from the sky 
Which turns into pearls as it falls in the sea." 

Turquoise. This stone was probably more esteemed for 
its secret virtues than from any commercial value ; the tur- 
quoise, turkise, or turkey-stone, having from a remote period 
been supposed to possess talismanic properties. Thus, in 
the "Merchant of Venice" (iii, i), Shylock says: "It was 
my turquoise ; I had it of Leah when I was a bachelor : I 
would not have given it for a wilderness of monkeys." Mr. 
Dyce' says that Shylock valued his turquoise, " not only as 
being the gift of Leah, but on account of the imaginary 
virtues ascribed to it ; which was supposed to become pale 
or to brighten according as the health of the wearer was bad 
or good." Thus, Ben Jonson, in " Sejanus " (i. i), alludes to 
its wonderful properties: 

" And true as turkoise in the dear lord's ring, 
Look well or ill with him." 

Fenton, in his "Certain Secret Wonders of Nature " (1569), 
thus describes it : " The turkeys doth move when there is any 
evil prepared to him that weareth it." There were numer- 
ous other magical properties ascribed to the turquoise. Thus, 
it was supposed to lose its color entirely at the death "of its 
owner, but to recover it when placed upon the finger of a 
new and healthy possessor. It was also said that whoever 
wore a turquoise, so that either it or its setting touched the 
skin, might fall from any height, the stone attracting to 
itself the whole force of the blow. With the Germans, the 
turquoise is still the gem appropriated to the ring, the 
" g^gc d'amour," presented by the lover on the acceptance 
of his suit, the permanence of its color being believed to 
depend upon the constancy of his affection.' 

' " Glossary," p. 465. 

^ See C. W. King on " Precious Stones," 1867, p. 267. 



1 



CHAPTER XVI. 

SPORTS AND PASTIMES. 

Very many of the old sports and pastimes in popular use 
in Shakespeare's da}^ have long ago not only been laid aside, 
but, in the course of years, have become entirely forgotten. 
This is to be regretted, as a great number of these capital 
diversions were admirably suited both for in and out of 
doors, the simplicity which marked them being one of their 
distinguishing charms. That Shakespeare, too, took an in- 
terest in these good old sources of recreation, may be gath- 
ered from the frequent reference which he has made to 
them ; his mention of some childish game even serving oc- 
casionally as an illustration in a passage characterized by its 
force and vigor. 

ArcJicry. In Shakespeare's day this was a very popular 
diversion, and the " Knights of Prince Arthur's Round Ta- 
ble " was a society of archers instituted by Henry VIII., 
and encouraged in the reign of Elizabeth.' Fitzstephen, 
who wrote in the reign of Henry II., notices it among the 
summer pastimes of the London youth ; and the repeated 
statutes, from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century, enforc- 
ing the use of the bow, generally ordered the leisure time 
upon holidays to be passed in its exercise." Shakespeare 
seems to have been intimately acquainted with the numer- 
ous terms connected with archery, many of which we find 
scattered throughout his plays. Thus, in " Love's Labour's 
Lost " (iv. i), Maria uses the expression, " Wide o' the bow 
hand," a term which signified a good deal to the left of the 
mark. 

' See Drake's " Skakespeare and His Times," vol. ii. pp. 178-181. 
- Brand's " Pop. Antiq.," 1870, vol. ii. p. 290. 



SPORTS AND PASTIMES. 3^5 

The " clout " was the nail or pin of the target, and " frora 
the passages," says Dyce,' " which I happen to recollect in 
our early writers, I should say that the clout, or pin, stood 
in the centre of the inner circle of the butts, which circle, 
being painted white, was called the white ; that, to 'hit the 
white ' was a considerable feat, but that to ' hit or cleave the 
clout or pin ' was a much greater one, though, no doubt, the 
expressions were occasionally used to signify the same thing, 
viz., to hit the mark." In " Love's Labour's Lost" (iv. i), 
Costard says of Boyet : 

" Indeed, a' must shoot nearer, or he'll ne'er hit the clout ;" 

and, in " 2 Henry IV." (iii. 2), Shallow says of old Double: 
" He would have clapped i' the clout at twelve score " — that 
is, he would have hit the clout at twelve-score yards. And 
" King Lear " (iv. 6) employs the phrase " i' the clout, i' the 
clout : hewgh !" 

In "Romeo and Juliet" (ii. 4), where Mercutio relates 
how Romeo is " shot thorough the ear with a love-song; the 
very pin of his heart cleft with the blind bow-boy's butt- 
shaft," the metaphor, of course, is from archery. 

The term " loose " was the technical one for the discharg- 
ing of an arrow, and occurs in " Love's Labour's Lost " (v. 2). 

According to Capell,'" the words of Bottom, in "A Mid- 
summer-Night's Dream " (i. 2), " hold, or cut bow-strings," 
were a proverbial phrase, and alluded to archery. " When a 
party was made at butts, assurance of meeting was given in 
the words of that phrase, the sense of the person using them 
being that he w^ould ' hold ' or keep promise, or they might 
'cut his bow-strings,' demolish him for an archer." Whether, 
adds Dyce, " this be the true explanation of the phrase, I 
am unable to determine." 

A// Jiid, all /lid. Biron, in " Love's Labour's Lost " (iv. 3), 
no doubt means the game well-known as hide-and-seek, 
"All hid, all hid; an old infant play." The following note, 
however, in Cotgrave's " French and Knglish Dictionary," 
has been adduced to show that he may possibl)- mean blincl- 

' " Glossary," p. 84. ' " Glossary," p. 210, 



396 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

man's-buff: " Clignemasset. The childish play called Hod- 
man-blind [/.r., blind-man's-buff], Harrie-racket, or Are you 
all hid." 

Backgmnnion. The old name for this game was " Tables," 
as in " Love's Labour's Lost " (v. 2) : 

" This is the ape of form, monsieur the nice 
That, when he plays at tables, chides the dice." 

An interesting history of this game will be found in Strutt's 
" Sports and Pastimes " (1876, pp. 419-421). 

Barley-break. This game, called also the " Last Couple in 
Hell," which is alluded to in the " Two Noble Kinsmen," 
(iv. 3), was played by six people, three of each sex, who were 
coupled by lot.' A piece of ground was then chosen, and 
divided into three compartments, of which the middle one 
was called hell. It was the object of the couple condemned 
to this division to catch the others, who advanced from the 
two extremities ; in which case a change of situation took 
place, and hell was filled by the couple who were excluded 
by preoccupation from the other places. This catching, 
however, was not so easy, as, by the rules of the game, the 
middle couple were not to separate before they had suc- 
ceeded, while the others might break hands whenever they 
found themselves hard pressed. When all had been taken 
in turn, the last couple were said "to be in hell," and the 
game ended. 

The game was frequently mentioned by old writers, and 
appears to have been very popular. From Herrick's Poems, 
it is seen that the couples in their confinement occasionally 
solaced themselves by kisses : 

''Barley-break ; or. Last in Hell. 
" We two are last in hell ; what may we fear, 
To be tormented, or kept pris'ners here ? 
Alas, if kissing be of plagues the worst. 
We'll wish in hell we had been last and first." 

In Scotland it was called barla-breikis, and was, says 
1 From Gifiord's Note on Massinger's Works, 1813, vol. i. p. 104. 



SPORTS AND PASTIMES. 



397 



Jamieson, "generally played by young people in a corn- 
yard, hence its name, barla-bracks, about the stacks." ' The 
term ''hell," says Narcs," "was indiscreet, and must have 
produced many profane allusions, besides familiarizing what 
ought always to preserve its due effect of awe upon the 
mind." Both its names are alluded to in the following 
passage in Shirley's " Bird in a Cage :" 

" Shall's to barlibreak? 
I was in hell last ; 'tis little less to be in a petticoat sometimes." 

Base. This was a rustic game, known also as " Prison 
base " or " Prison bars." It is mentioned in " Cymbeline " 
(v. 3) by Posthumus: 

" Lads more like to run 
The country base, than to commit such slaughter." 

And in " Two Gentlemen of Verona " (i. 2) by Lucetta : 

" Indeed, I bid the base for Proteus." ' 

The success of this pastime depended upon the agility of 
the candidates, and their skill in running. Early in the 
reign of Edward III. it is spoken of as a childish amuse- 
ment, and was prohibited to be played in the avenues of the 
palace at Westminster during the session of Parliament, 
because of the interruption it occasioned to the members 
and others in passing to and fro as their business required. 
It was also played by men, and especially in Cheshire and 
other adjoining counties, where it seems to have been in 
high repute among all classes. Strutt thus describes the 
game:' "The performance of this pastime requires two 
parties of equal number, each of them having a base or 
home to themselves, at the distance of about twenty or 
thirty yards. The players then on either side, taking hold 
of hands, extend themselves in length, and opposite to each 
other, as far as they conveniently^ can, always remembering 
that one of them must touch the base. When any one of 

■ See Jamieson's "Scottish Dictionary," 1879, vol. i. p. 122. 

* " Glossary," vol. i. p. 57. " Ibid. vol. i. p. 58. 

* "Sports and Pastimes," 1876, p. 143. 



2q8 folk-lore of SHAKESPEARE. 

them quits the hand of his fellow and runs into the field, 
which is called giving the chase, he is immediately followed 
by one of his opponents. He is again followed by a second 
from the former side, and he by a second opponent, and so 
on alternately until as many are out as choose to run, every 
one pursuing the man he first followed, and no other; and 
if he overtake him near enough to touch him, his party 
claims one towards their game, and both return home. 
They then run forth again and again in like manner until 
the number is completed that decides the victory. This 
number is optional, and rarely exceeds twenty." 

The phrase to " bid the base," means to run fast, chal- 
lenging another to pursue. It occurs again in "Venus and 

Adonis :" 

"To bid the wind a base he now prepares." 

In Spenser's " Fairy Queen " (bk. v. canto 8), we read : 

" So ran they all as they had been at base, 
They being chased that did others chase." 

Bat-foivliiig. This sport, which is noticed in " The Tem- 
pest " (ii. i) by Sebastian, was common in days gone by. It 
is minutely described in Markham's " Hunger's Prevention " 
(1600), which is quoted by Dyce.' The term "bat-fowling," 
however, had another signification, says Mr. Harting," in 
Shakespeare's day, and it may have been in this secondary 
sense that it is used in " The Tempest," being a slang word 
for a particular mode of cheating. Bat-fowling was prac- 
tised about dusk, when the rogue pretended to have 
dropped a ring or a jewel at the door of some Avell-fur- 

1 " Glossary," pp. 29, 30. 

^ See Harting's "Ornithology of Shakespeare," p. 156; Strutt's 
" Sports and Pastimes," 1876, p. 98. A simple mode of bat-fowling, 
by means of a large clap-net and a lantern, and called bird-batting, is 
alluded to in Fielding's "Joseph Andrews" (bk. ii. chap. x.). Drake 
thinks that it is to a stratagem of this kind Shakespeare alludes when 
he paints Buckingham exclaiming (" Henry VIII." i. i) : 

" The net has fall'n upon me ; I shall perish 
Under device and practice." 



SPORTS AND PASTIMES. 300 

nished shop, and, going in, asked the apprentice of the house 
to h'ght his candle to look for it. After some peering about 
the bat -fowler would drop the candle as if by accident. 
" Now, I pray you, good )'oung man," he would say, "do 
so much as light the candle again." While the boy was 
away the rogue plundered the shop, and having stolen ev- 
erything he could find stole himself away. 

Billiards. Shakespeare is guilty of an anachronism in 
"Antony and Cleopatra" (ii. 5), where he makes Cleopatra 
say: "Let's to billiards" — the game being unknown to the. 
ancients. The modern manner of playing at billiards differs 
from that formerly in use. At the commencement of the 
last century,' the billiard-table was square, having only three 
pockets for the balls to run in, situated on one of the sides — 
that is, at each corner, and the third between them. About 
the middle of the table a small arch of iron was placed, and 
at a little distance from it an upright cone called a king. At 
certain periods of the game it was necessary for the balls to 
be driven through the one and round the other, without 
knocking either of them down, which was not easily effect- 
ed, because they were not fastened to the table. 

Bonc-acc. This old game, popularly called "One-and 
Thirty," is alluded to by Grumio in " Taming of the Shrew "^ 
(i. 2): "Well, was it fit for a servant to use his master so; 
being, perhaps, for aught I see, two-and-thirty — a pip out."' 
It was very like the French game of "Vingt-un," only a 
longer reckoning. Strutt ^ says that " perhaps Bone-ace is 
the same as the game called Ace of Hearts, prohibited with 
all lotteries by cards and dice, An. 12 Geor. II., Cap. 38, 
sect. 2." It is mentioned in Massinger's "Fatal Dowry" 
(ii. 2): "You think, because you served my lady's mother, 
[you] are thirty-two years old, which is a pip out, you know." 

The phrase "to be two-and-thirty," a pip out, was an old 
cant term apphed to a person wlio was intoxicated. 

Bo-pccp. This nursery amusement, which consisted in 

' Strutt's " Sports and Pastimes," 1876, p. 396. 

" A pip is a spot upon a card. 

^ "Sports and Pastimes," 1876, p. 436. 



400 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

peeping from behind something, and crying " Bo !" is re- 
ferred to by the Fool in " King Lear " (i. 4) : " That such a 
king should play bo-peep." In Sherwood's Dictionary it 
is defined, " Jeu d'enfant ; ou (plustost) des nourrices aux 
petits enfans ; se cachans le visage et puis se monstrant." 
Minsheu's derivation of bo-peep, from the noise which chick- 
ens make when they come out of the shell, is, says Douce,' 
more whimsical than just. 

Boivls. Frequent allusions occur to this game, which 
seems to have been a popular pastime in olden times. The 
small ball, now called the jack, at which the players aim, was 
sometimes termed the " mistress." In " Troilus and Cres- 
sida " (iii. 2), Pandarus says : " So, so ; rub " on, and kiss the 
mistress." A bowl that kisses the jack, or mistress, is in the 
most advantageous position ; hence " to kiss the jack " served 
to denote a state of great advantage. Thus, in " Cymbeline " 
(ii. i), Cloten exclaims, " Was there ever man had such luck ! 
when I kissed the jack, upon an up-cast to be hit away! I 
had a hundred pound on't." There is another allusion to 
this game, according to Staunton, in "King John" (ii. i): 
" on the outward eye of fickle France " — the aperture on 
one side which contains the bias or weight that inclines the 
bowl in running from a direct course, being sometimes called 
the eye. 

A further reference to this game occurs in the following 
dialogue in " Richard II." (iii. 4): 

" Queen. What sport shall we devise here in this garden, 
To drive away the heavy thought of care ? 

I Lady. Madam, we'll play at bowls. 

Queen. 'Twill make me think the world is full of rubs, 
And that my fortune runs against the bias " 

— the bias, as stated above, being a weight inserted in one 
side of a bowl, in order to give it a particular inclination in 

' " Illustrations of Shakespeare," p. 405. 

^ Rub is still a term at the game, expressive of the movement of the 
balls. Cf. "King Lear" (ii. 2), and "Love's Labour's Lost" (iv. i), 
where Boyet, speaking of the game, says : " I fear too much rubbing." 



SPORTS AND PASTIMES. 



401 



bowling. " To run against the bias," therefore, became a 
proverb. Thus, to quote another instance, in the " Tam- 
ing of the Shrew" (iv. 5) Petruchio says : 

" Well, forward, forward ! thus the bowl should run, 
And not unluckily against the bias." 

And in " Troilus and Cressida " (iv. 5), the term " bias- 
cheek " is used to denote a cheek swelHng out Hke the bias 
of a bowl.' 

Cards. Some of the old terms connected with card-play- 
ing are curious, a few of which are alluded to by Shakespeare. 
Thus, in " King Lear" (v. i), Edmund says: 

" And hardly shall I carry out my side," 

alluding to the card table, where to carry out a side meant 
to carry out the game Avith your partner successfully. So, 
"to set up a side" was to become partners in the game; 
" to pull or pluck down a side" was to lose it.^ 

A lurch at cards denoted an easy victory. So, in " Corio- 
lanus" (ii. 2), Cominius says: "he lurch'd all swords of the 
garland," meaning, as Malone says, that Coriolanus gained 
from all other warriors the wreath of victory, with ease, and 
incontestable superiority. 

A pack of cards was formerly termed " a deck of cards," 
as in " 3 Henry VI." (v. i) : 

" The king was slily fingcr'd from the deck." 

Again, " to vie" was also a term at cards, and meant par- 
ticularly to increase the stakes, and generally to challenge 
any one to a contention, bet, wager, etc. So, Cleopatra 
(v. 2), says : 

" nature wants stufT 
To vie strange forms with fancy." 

CJicrry-pit. This consisted in throwing cherry stones into 
a little hole — a game, says Nares, still practised with dumps 

* Halliwell-Phillipps' " Handbook Index to Shakespeare," p. 43. 
' Staunton's " Shakespeare," vol. iii. p. 592. 

26 



402 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

or money.' In " Twelfth Night " (iii. 4), Sir Toby alludes to 
it : " What, man ! 'tis not for gravity to play at cherry-pit 
with Satan." Nash, in his " Pierce Pennilesse," speaking of 
the disfigurement of ladies' faces by painting, says: "You 
may play at cherry-pit in the dint of their cheeks." 

Chess. As might be expected, several allusions occur in 
Shakespeare's plays to this popular game. In " The Tem- 
pest" (v. i), Ferdinand and Miranda are represented playing 
at it ; and in " King John" (ii. i), Elinor says: 

" That thou mayst be a queen, and check the world !" 

In the "Taming of the Shrew" (i. i), Katharina asks: 

" I pray you, sir, is it your will 
To make a stale' of me amongst these mates?" 

alluding, as Douce ^ suggests, to the chess term oi stale-mate, 
which is used when the game is ended by the king being 
alone and unchecked, and then forced into a situation from 
which he is unable to move without going into check. This 
is a dishonorable termination to the adversary, who thereby 
loses the game. Thus, in Bacon's Twelfth Essay: "They 
stand still like a stale at chess, where it is no mate, but yet 
the game cannot stir." 

Dice. Among the notices of this game, may be quoted 
that in " Henry V." (iv. prologue): 

" The confident and over-lusty French 
Do the low-rated English play at dice." 

Edgar, in " King Lear " (iii. 4), says : " Wine loved I deep- 
ly, dice dearly." Pistol, in " Merry Wives of Windsor" (i. 3), 
gives a double allusion : 

" Let vultures gripe thy guts ! — for gourd and fullam holds. 
And high and low beguiles the rich and poor." 

"Gourds" were false dice, Avith a secret cavity scooped out 

' See Brand's " Pop. Antiq.," vol. ii. p. 409. 

' She means, " Do you intend to make a mockery of me among 
these companions?" 

=• " Illustrations of Shakspeare," p. 20. 



SPORTS AND PASTIMES. 403 

like a gourd. '' Fullams" were also false dice, " loaded with 
metal on one side, so as better to produce high throws, or 
to turn up low numbers, as was required, and were hence 
named * high men ' or * low men,' also ' high fullams ' and ' low 
fullams.' " ' It has been suggested that dice were termed 
fullams either because Fulham was the resort of sharpers, 
or because they were principally manufactured there. 

Dun is in the mire. This is a Christmas sport, which 
Gifford" describes as follows: "A log of wood is brought 
into the midst of the room; this is Dun (the cart-horse), and 
a cry is raised that he is stuck in the mire. Two of the 
company advance, either with or without ropes, to draw him 
out. After repeated attempts, they find themselves unable 
to do it, and call for more assistance. The game continues 
till all the company take part in it, when Dun is extricated. 
Much merriment is occasioned from the awkward efforts of 
the rustics to lift the log, and from sundry arch contriv^ances 
to let the ends of it fall on one another's toes. Thus, in 
" Romeo and Juliet " (i. 4), Mercutio says : 

" If thou art dun, we'll draw thee from the mire." 

Beaumont and Fletcher, also, in the "Woman Hater" 
(iv. 3), allude to this game : 

" Dun's in the mire, get out again how he can." 

Fast and Loose. This was a cheating game, much prac- 
tised in Shakespeare's day, whereby gypsies and other va- 
grants beguiled the common people of their money; and 
hence was very often to be seen at fairs. Its other name 
was " pricking at the belt or girdle ;" and it is thus described 
by Sir J. Hawkins: "A leathern belt was made up into a 
number of intricate folds, and placed edgewise upon a table. 
One of the folds was made to resemble the middle of the 
girdle, so that whoever could thrust a skewer into it would 
think he held it fast to the table ; whereas, when he has so 
done, the person with whom he plays may take hold of both 

' GiflFord's note on Jonson's Works, vol. ii. p. 3. 
- Ibid., vol. vii. p. 283. 



404 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



ends, and draw it away." In "Antony and Cleopatra" 
(iv. 12), Antony says: 

" Like a right gypsy, hath, at fast and loose, 
Beguil'd me to the very heart of loss." 

The drift of this game seems to have been to encourage 
wagers whether the belt was fast or loose, which the juggler 
could easily make it at his option. It is constantly alluded 
to by old writers, and is thus described in Drayton's " Moon- 
calf:" 

" He like a gypsy oftentimes would go, 
All kinds of gibberish he hath learn'd to know. 
And with a stick, a short string, and a noose, 
Would show the people tricks at fast and loose." 

Fencing. In years gone by, there were three degrees in 
fencing, a master's, a provost's, and a scholar's.' To each of 
these a prize was played, with various weapons, in some open 
place or square. In "Titus Andronicus" (i. i), this practice 
is alluded to by Saturninus : 

" So, Bassianus, you have play'd your prize." 

In the " Merry Wives of Windsor" (i. i). Slender says: " I 
bruised my shin th' other day with playing at sword and 
dagger with a master of fence," i. c, with one who had taken 
his master's degree in the science. 

Among the numerous allusions to fencing quoted by 
Shakespeare may be mentioned the following: "Venue or 
veney " was a fencing term, meaning an attack or hit. It is 
used in the "Merry Wives of Windsor" (i. i), by Slender, 
who relates how he bruised his shin "with playing at sword 
and dagger with a master of fence; three veneys for a dish 
of stewed prunes." It is used metaphorically in " Love's 
Labour's Lost" (v. i), for a brisk attack, by Armado : "A 
sweet touch, a quick venue of wit ! snip, snap, quick and 
home!"' The Italian term " Stoccado " or " Stoccata," ab- 

' See Douce's " Illustrations of Shakespeare," p. 35. 
- See Nares's " Glossary," vol. ii. p. 919. 



SPORTS AND PASTIMES. 



405 



brcviatcd also into "Stock," seems to have had a similar 
signification. In "Romeo and Juliet" (iii. 1), Mercutio, 
drawing his sword, says : 

" Alia stoccata carries it away." 

In the " Merry Wives of Windsor" (ii. i), it is used by Shal- 
low: "In these times you stand on distance, your passes, 
stoccadoes, and I know not what." Again, " Montant," an 
abbreviation of Montanto, denoted an upright blow or thrust, 
and occurs also in the "Merry Wives of Windsor" (ii. 3), 
where the Host tells Caius that he, with the others, has come 
— " to see thee pass thy punto, thy stock, thy reverse, thy dis- 
tance, thy montant." Hence, in " Much Ado About Noth- 
ing" (i. i), Beatrice jocularly calls Benedick " Signior Mon- 
tanto," meaning to imply that he was a great fencer. Of 
the other old fencing terms quoted in the passage above, it 
appears that "passado" implied a pass or motion forwards. 
It occurs in "Romeo and Juliet" (ii. 4), where Mercutio 
speaks of the " immortal passado ! the punto reverso !" 
Again, in "Love's Labour's Lost" (i. 2), Armado says of 
Cupid that " The passado he respects not, the duello he re- 
gards not." The "punto reverso" was a backhanded thrust 
or stroke, and the term "distance" was the space between 
the antagonists. 

Shakespeare has also alluded to other fencing terms, such 
as the " foin," a thrust, which is used by the Host in the 
" Merry Wives of Windsor" (iii. 2), and in" Much Ado About 
Nothing" (v. i), where Antonio says, in his heated conversa- 
tion with Leonato : 

" Sir boy, I'll whip you from your foining fence ; 
Nay, as I am a gentleman, I will." 

The term "traverse" denoted a posture of opposition, and 
is used by the Host in the " Merry Wives of Windsor" (ii. 3). 
A "bout," too, is another fencing term, to which the King 
refers in " Hamlet " (iv. 7) : 

" When in your motion you are hot and dry — 
As make your bouts more violent to that end." 



4o6 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

Filliping the Toad. This is a common and cruel diversion 
of boys. They lay a board, two or three feet long, at right 
angles over a transverse piece two or three inches thick, 
then, placing the toad at one end of the board, the other end 
is struck by a bat or large stick, which throws the poor toad 
forty or fifty feet perpendicularly from the earth ; and the 
fall generally kills it. In " 2 Henry IV." (i. 2), Falstaff says : 
" If I do, fillip me with a three-man beetle." ' 

Flap -dragon." This pastime was much in use in days 
gone by. A small combustible body was set on fire, and 
put afloat in a glass of liquor. The courage of the toper 
was tried in the attempt to toss off the glass in such a man- 
ner as to prevent the flap-dragon doing mischief — raisins in 
hot brandy being the usual flap-dragons. Shakespeare sev- 
eral times mentions this custom, as in " Love's Labour's 
Lost" (v. i) where Costard says: "Thou art easier swal- 
lowed than a flap-dragon." And in "2 Henry IV." (ii. 4), 
he makes Falstaff say : " and drinks off candles' ends for 
flap-dragons."^ 

It appears that formerly gallants used to vie with each 
other in drinking off flap-dragons to the health of their mis- 
tresses — which were sometimes even candles' ends, sAvimming 
in brandy or other strong spirits, whence, when on fire, they 
were snatched by the mouth and swallowed;^ an allusion 
to which occurs in the passage above. As candles' ends 
made the most formidable flap-dragon, the greatest merit 
was ascribed to the heroism of swallowing them. Ben Jon- 
son, in " The Masque of the Moon " (1838, p. 616, ed. Gifford), 
says : " But none that will hang themselves for love, or eat 
candles' ends, etc., as the sublunary lovers do." 

' A three-man beetle is a heavy implement, with three handles, used 
in driving piles, etc., which required three men to lift it. 

* A correspondent of " Notes and Queries," 2d series, vol. vii. p. 277, 
suggests as a derivation the German schnapps, spirit, and drache, drag- 
on, and that it is equivalent to spirit-fire. 

' Cf. " Winter's Tale" (iii. 3) : " But to make an end of the ship, — to 
see how the sea flap-dragoned it." 

* See Nares's " Glossary," vol. i. p. 131. 



SPORTS AND PASTIMES. 



407 



Football. An allusion to this once highly popular game 
occurs in "Comedy of Errors" (ii. i). Dromio of Ephesus 
asks : 

" Am I so round with you as you with me. 
That like a football you do spurn me thus? 

* =i: * IK :(: * * 

If I last in this service, you must case me in leather." 

In "King Lear" (i. 4), Kent calls Oswald "a base foot- 
ball player." 

According to Strutt/ it does not appear among the popu- 
lar exercises before the reign of Edward III.; and then, 
in 1349, it was prohibited by a public edict because it im- 
peded the progress of archery. The danger, however, at- 
tending this pastime occasioned James I. to say: "From 
this Court I debarre all rough and violent exercises, as the 
football, meeter for laming than making able the users 
thereof." 

Occasionally the rustic boys made use of a blown bladder, 
without the covering of leather, by way of a football, putting 
beans and horse-beans inside, which made a rattling noise as 
it was kicked about. Barclay, in his " Ship of Fools " (i 508) 
thus graphically describes it : 

" Howe in the winter, when men kill the fat swine, 
They get the bladder and blow it great and thin. 
With many beans or peason put within : 
It ratleth, soundcth, and shineth clere and fayre, 
While it is thrown and caste up in the ayre, 
Eche one contendeth and hath a great delite 
With foote and with hande the bladder for to smite ; 
If it fall to grounde, they lifte it up agayne, 
This wise to labour they count it for no payne." 

Shrovetide was the great season for football matches;' and 
at a comparatively recent period it was played in Derby, 
Nottingham, Kingston-upon-Thames, etc. 

' " Sports and Pastimes," pp. 168, 169. 

* See " British Popular Customs," 1876, pp. 78, 83, 87, 401. 



4o8 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

Glcck. According to Drake/ this game is alluded to twice 
by Shakespeare — in " A Midsummer-Night's Dream " (iii. i) : 

" Nay, I can gleek upon occasion." 

And in " Romeo and Juliet" (iv. 5): 

" I Musiciaji. What will you give us ? 
Peter. No money, on my faith, but the gleek." 

Douce, however, considers that the word glcck was simply 
used to express a stronger sort of joke, a scoffing; and that 
the phrase " to give the gleek" merely denoted to pass a 
jest upon, or to make a person appear ridiculous. 

Handy-dandy. A very old game among children. A 
child hides something in his hand, and makes his playfellow 
guess in which hand it is. If the latter guess rightly, he 
wins the article, if wrongly, he loses an equivalent.^ Some- 
times, says Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, " the game is played by a 
sort of sleight-of-hand, changing the article rapidly from one 
hand into the other, so that the looker-on is often deceived, 
and induced to name the hand into which it is apparently 
thrown." This is what Shakespeare alludes to by " change 
places " in " King Lear" (iv. 6) : " see how yond justice rails 
upon yond simple thief. Hark, in thine ear : change places ; 
and, handy-dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief ?"^ 

Hide-fox and all after. A children's game, considered by 
many to be identical with hide-and-seek. It is mentioned 
by Hamlet (iv. 2). Some commentators think that the term 
" kid-fox," in " Much Ado About Nothing " (ii. 3), may have 
been a technical term in the game of " hide-fox." Some 
editions have printed it " hid-fox." Claudio says : 

" O, very well, my lord : the music ended. 
We'll fit the kid-fox with a pennyworth." 

Hoodnian -blind. The childish sport now called blind- 
man's buff was known by various names, such as hood-wink, 

' "Shakespeare and his Times," vol. ii. p. 170; see Douce's "Illus- 
trations of Shakspeare," pp. 118, 435. 
^ Dyce's " Glossary," p. 199. 
^ See Brand's " Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. ii. p. 420. 



SPORTS AND PASTIMES. 



409 



blind-hob, etc. It Avas termed "hoodman-blind," because 
the players formerly were blinded with their hoods,' and 
under this designation it is mentioned by Hamlet (iii. 4) : 

" What devil was't 
That thus hath cozen'd you at hoodman-blind?" 

In Scotland this game was called " belly-blind ;" and Gay, 
in his " Shepherd's Week " (i. 96), says, concerning it : 

" As once I play'd at blindman's buff, it hapt 
About my eyes the towel thick was wrapt, 
I miss'd the swains, and seiz'd on Blouzehnd. 
True speaks that ancient proverb, ' Love is bHnd.'" 

The term "hoodman" occurs in "All's Well that Ends 
Well " (iv. 3). The First Lord says : " Hoodman comes I" and 
no doubt there is an allusion to the game in the same play 
(iii. 6), " we will bind and hoodwink him ;" and in '• Mac- 
beth" (iv. 3) Macduff says: "the time you may so hood- 
wink." There may also have been a reference to falconry — 
the hawks being hooded in the intervals of sport. Thus, in 
Latham's "Falconry" (161 5), "to hood" is the term used 
for the blinding, " to unhood " for the unblinding. 

Horsc-raciiig. That this diversion was in Shakespeare's 
day occasionally practised in the spirit of the modern turf is 
evident from " C}Mnbeline " (iii. 2) : 

" I have heard of riding wagers. 
Where horses have been. nimbler than the sands 
That run i' the clock's behalf." 

Burton,'^ too, who wrote at the close of the Shakespearian 
era, mentions the ruinous consequences of this recreation : 
" Horse races are desports of great men, and good in them- 
selves, though many gentlemen by such means gallop quite 
out of their fortunes." 

Leap-frog. One boy stoops down with his hands upon 

* See Strutt's " Sports and Pastimes," pp. 499, 500 ; Brand's " Pop. 

Antiq.," 1849, vol. ii. pp. 397, 398. 

^ " Anatomy of Melancholy ;" Drake's " Shakespeare and His Times," 
vol. ii. p. 298. 



4IO 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



his knees, and others leap over him, every one of them run- 
ning forward and stooping in his turn. It is mentioned by 
Shakespeare in " Henry V." (v. 2), where he makes the king 
say, "If I could win a lady at leap-frog, or by vaulting into 
my saddle with my armour on my back, ... I should quickly 
leap into a wife." Ben Jonson, in his com.edy of" Barthol- 
omew Fair," speaks of "a leappe frogge chance note." 

LaiigJi-and-lie-doivn (more properly laugh-and-lay-down ) 
was a game at cards, to which there is an allusion in the 
"Two Noble Kinsmen " (ii. i): 

"Emilia. I could laugh now. 

Waiting-%vomaii. I could lie down, I'm sure." 

Loggat. The game so called resembles bowls, but with 
notable differences.' First, it is played, not on a green, but 
on a floor strewed with ashes. The jack is a wheel of lig- 
num vitcE, or other hard wood, nine inches in diameter, and 
three or four inches thick. The loggat, made of apple- 
wood, is a truncated cone, twenty -six or twenty-seven 
inches in length, tapering from a girth of eight and a half 
to nine inches at one end to three and a half or four inches 
at the other. Each player has three loggats, which he 
throws, holding lightly the thin end. The object is to lie 
as near the jack as possible. Hamlet speaks of this game 
(v. i): " Did these bones cost no more the breeding, but to 
play at loggats with 'em ?" comparing, perhaps, the skull to 
the jack at which the bones were thrown. In Ben Jonson's 
" Tale of a Tub " (iv. 5) we read : 

" Now are they tossing of his legs and arms. 
Like loggets at a pear-tree." 

Sir Thomas Hanmer makes the game the same as nine- 
pins or skittles. He says: " It is one of the unlawful games 
enumerated in the Thirty-third statute of Henry VIII.;' it 
is the same which is now called kittle-pins, in which the boys 

' Clark and Wright's " Notes to Hamlet," 1876, pp. 212, 213. 
^ See Strutt's " Sports and Pastimes," p. 365 ; Nares's " Glossary," 
vol. ii. p. 522. 



SPORTS AND PASTIMES. 



411 



often make use of bones instead of wooden pins, throwing 
at them with another bone instead of bowling." 

Marbles. It has been suggested that there is an allusion 
to this pastime in " Measure for Measure " (i. 3) : 

'• Believe not that the dribbling dart of love 
Can pierce a complete bosom." 

— dribbling being a term used in the game of marbles for 
shooting slowly along the ground, in contradistinction to 
plumping, which is elevating the hand so that the marble 
does not touch the ground till it reaches the object of its 
aim.' According to others, a dribbler was a term in archery- 
expressive of contempt.^ 

Muss. This was a phrase for a scramble, when any 
small objects were thrown down, to be taken by those who 
could seize them. In ''Antony and Cleopatra" (iii. 13), An- 
tony says: 

" Like boys unto a muss, kings would start forth." 

The word is used by Dryden, in the Prologue to the " Wid- 
ow Ranter:" 

" Bauble and cap no sooner are thrown down 
But there's a muss of more than half the town." 

Nme-Men s-Morris. This rustic game, which is still ex- 
tant in some parts of England, was sometimes called " the 
nine men's merrils," from mcrcllcs, or incrcaux, an ancient 
French word for the jettons or counters with which it was 
played.^ The other term, morris, is probably a corruption 
suggested by the sort of dance which, in the progress of the 
game, the counters performed. Some consider" that it was 
identical with the game known as " Nine-holes,"'' mentioned 
by Herrick in his " Hesperides :" 



' Baker's " Northamptonshire Glossary," 1854, vol. i. p. 198. 

^ See Dyce's "Glossary," p. 134. 

' Douce's " Illustrations of Shakespeare," p. 144. 

* See Nares's " Glossary," vol. ii. p. 605. 

* See Strutt's " Sports and Pastimes," 1S76, pp. 368, 369. 



412 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

" Raspe playes at nine-holes, and 'tis known he gets 
Many a tester by his game, and bets." 



Cotgrave speaks of " Le jeu des merelles," the boyish 
game called " merills," or " five pennie morris," played here 
most commonly with stones, but in France with pawns or 
men made on purpose, and termed " merelles." It was also 
called " peg morris," as is evidenced by Clare, who, in his 
" Rural Muse," speaking of the shepherd boy, says: 

"Oft we may track his haunts, where he hath been 
To spend the leisure which his toils bestow, 
By nine-peg morris nicked upon the green." 

The game is fully described by James, in the " Variorum 
Shakespeare," as follows : " In that part of Warwickshire 
where Shakespeare was educated, and the neighbouring 
parts of Northamptonshire, the shepherds and other boys 
dig up the turf with their knives to represent a sort of im- 
perfect chessboard. It consists of a square, sometimes only 
a foot diameter, sometimes three or four yards. Within 
this is another square, every side of which is parallel to the 
external square ; and these squares are joined by lines drawn 
from each corner of both squares, and the middle of each 
line. One party or player has wooden pegs, the other stones, 
which they move in such a manner as to take up each oth- 
er's men, as they are called, and the area of the inner square 
is called the pound, in which the men taken up are impound- 
ed. These figures are, by the country people, called nine- 
men s-inorris, or nicrrils ; and are so called because each party 
has nine men. These figures are always cut upon the green 
turf or leys, as they are called, or upon the grass at the end of 
ploughed lands, and in rainy seasons never fail to be choked 
up with mud." This verifies the allusion made by Shake- 
speare in " A Midsummer-Night's Dream " (ii. i) : 

"The nine men's morris is fill'd up with mud ; 
And the quaint mazes in the wanton green, 
For lack of tread are undistinguishable." 

This game was also transferred to a board, and continues a 



SPORTS AND PASTIMES. 413 

fireside recreation of the agricultural laborer. It is often 
called by the name of" Mill," or "Shepherd's Mill."' 

Noddy. Some doubt exists as to what game at cards was 
signified by this term. It has been suggested that cribbage 
is meant. Mr. Singer thinks it bore some resemblance to 
the more recent game of " Beat the Knave out of Doors," 
which is mentioned together with " Ruff and new coat " in 
Heywood's play of " A Woman Killed with Kindness." 
The game is probably alluded to in " Troilus and Cressida" 
(i. 2), in the following dialogue : 

" Paiidarus. When comes Troilus? — I'll show you Troilus anon: 
if he see me, you shall see him nod at me. 
Cressida. Will he give you the nod ? 
Pandarus. You shall see. 
Cressida. If he do, the rich shall have more.''" 

The term " noddy " was also applied to a fool, because, says 
Minsheu, he nods when he should speak. In this sense it 
occurs in " Two Gentlemen of Verona " (i. i) : 

" Speed. You mistook, sir : I say, she did nod ; and you ask me, if 
she did nod ; and I say, ' Ay.' 

Proteus. And that set together is noddy." 

Novcin Quinquc. A game of dice, so called from its prin- 
cipal throws being five and nine. It is alluded to in " Love's 
Labour's Lost " (v. 2) by Biron, who speaks of it simply as 
" novem." 

ParisJi-top. Formerly a top was kept for public exercise 
in a parish — a custom to which the old writers often refer. 
Thus, in " Twelfth Night " (i. 3), Sir Toby Belch says : " He's 
a coward, and a coystril, that will not drink to my niece till 
his brains turn o' the toe like a parish-top." On which pas- 
sage Mr. Steevens says : " A large top was kept in every 
village, to be whipped in frosty weather, that the peasants 
might be kept warm by exercise, and out of mischief while 
they could not w^ork." Beaumont and Fletcher, in " Thierry 
and Thcodoret " (ii. 3), speak of the practice : 

' See Brand's "Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. ii. pp. 429, 432. 
* See Nares's " Glossary," vol. ii. p. 606. 



414 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

" I'll hazard 
My life upon it, that a body of twelve 
Should scourge him hither like a parish top, 
And make him dance before you." 

And in their "Night Walker" (i. 3) they mention the 
" town-top." Evelyn, enumerating the uses of willow-wood, 
speaks of " great town-topps." Mr. Knight' remarks that 
the custom which existed in the time of Elizabeth, and 
probably long before, of a large top being provided for the 
amusement of the peasants in frosty weather, presents a 
curious illustration of the mitigating influences of social 
kindness in an age of penal legislation. 

Primcro. In Shakespeare's time this was a very fashion- 
able game at cards, and hence is frequently alluded to by 
him. It was known under the various designations of /Vz- 
mcro, Pri?nc,d.nd Primavista ; and, according to Strutt," has 
been reckoned among the most ancient games of cards 
known to have been played in England. Shakespeare 
speaks of Henry VIII. (v. i) playing at primero with the 
Duke of Suffolk, and makes Falstaff exclaim, in " Merry 
Wives of Windsor" (iv. 5), " I never prospered since I for- 
swore myself at primero." That it was the court game is 
shown in a very curious picture described by Mr. Barrington, 
in the " ArchiEologia'' (vol. viii. p. 132), which represents 
Lord Burleigh playing at this pastime with three other no- 
blemen. Primero continued to be the most fashionable 
game throughout the reigns of Henry VIII., Edward VI., 
Mary, Elizabeth, and James I.^ In the Earl of Northum- 
berland's letters about the Gunpowder-plot we find that 
Josceline Percy was playing at primero on Sunday, when 
his uncle, the conspirator, called on him at Essex House; 
and in the Sydney Papers there is an account of a quarrel 
between Lord Southampton and one Ambrose Willoughby, 
on account of the former persisting to play at primero in 

' " Pictorial Shakespeare," vol. ii. p. 145. 

'^ " Sports and Pastimes." 

= Smith's "Festivals, Games, and Amusements," 1831, p. 320. 



SPORTS AND PASTLMES. 



415 



the presence-chamber after the queen had retired to rest. 
The manner of playing was thus : Each player had four 
cards dealt to him one by one ; the seven was the highest 
card in point of number that he could avail himself of, which 
counted for twenty-one; the six counted for sixteen, the 
five for fifteen, and the ace for the same ; but the two, the 
three, and the four for their respective points only. 

There may be further allusions to this game in " Taming 
of the Shrew " (ii. i), where Tranio says : 

" A vengeance on your crafty, wither'd hide ! 
Yet I have faced it with a card of ten " 

— the phrase " to face it with a card of ten " being derived, 
as some suggest, possibly from primero, wherein the stand- 
ing boldly on a ten was often successful. " To face " meant, 
as it still does, to attack by impudence of face. In " i Hen- 
ry VL" (v. 3) Suffolk speaks of a "cooling card," which Nares 
considers is borrowed from primero — a card so decisive as 
to cool the courage of the adversary. Gifford objects to this 
explanation, and says a " cooling-card " is, literally, a do/us. 
There can be no doubt, however, that, metaphorically, the 
term was used to denote something which damped or over- 
whelmed the hopes of an expectant. Thus, in Fletcher's 
" Island Princess" (i. 3), Piniero says : 

" These hot youths 
I fear will find a cooling-card." 

PusJi-pin was a foolish sport, consisting in nothing more 
than pushing one pin across another. Biron, in " Love's 
Labour's Lost " (iv. 3), speaks of Nestor playing " at push- 
pin with the boj's." 

Quintain. This was a figure set up for tilters to run at, 
in mock resemblance of a tournament, and is alluded to in 
" As You Like It " (i. 2) by Orlando, who says : 

" My better parts 
Are all thrown down, and that which here stands up 
Is but a quintain, a mere lifeless block." 

It cannot be better or more minutely described tiian in the 



41 6 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

words of Mr. Strutt:' "Tilting or combating at the quin- 
tain is a military exercise of high antiquity, and antecedent, 
I doubt not, to the jousts and tournaments. The quintain 
originally was nothing more than the trunk of a tree or post 
set up for the practice of the tyros in chivalry. Afterwards 
a staff or spear was fixed in the earth, and a shield being 
hung upon it, was the mark to strike at. The dexterity of 
the performer consisted in smiting the shield in such a man- 
ner as to break the ligatures and bear it to the ground. In 
process of time this diversion was improved, and instead of 
a staff and the shield, the resemblance of a human figure 
carved in wood was introduced. To render the appearance 
of this figure more formidable, it was generally made in the 
likeness of a Turk or a Saracen, armed at all points, bearing 
a shield upon his left arm, and brandishing a club or a sabre 
with his right. The quintain thus fashioned was placed 
upon a pivot, and so contrived as to move round with facil- 
ity. In running at this figure, it was necessary for the horse- 
man to direct his lance with great adroitness, and make his 
stroke upon the forehead between the eyes, or upon the 
nose; for if he struck wide of those parts, especially upon 
the shield, the quintain turned about with much velocity, 
and, in case he was not exceedingly careful, would give him 
a severe blow upon the back with the wooden sabre held in 
the right hand, which was considered as highly disgraceful 
to the performer, while it excited the laughter and ridicule 
of the spectators."' In Ben Jonson's "Underwoods" it is 
thus humorously mentioned : 

" Go, Captain Stub, lead on, and show 
What horse you come on, by the blow 
You give Sir Quintain, and the cuff 
You 'scape o' the sandbags counterbuff." 

Quoits. This game derived its origin, according to Strutt,' 
from the ancient discus, and with us, at the present day, it 

' "Sports and Pastimes," 1876, p. 182. 
" See Nares's " Glossary," vol. ii. p. 713. 
' " Sports and Pastimes," p. 141. 



SPORTS AND PASTIMES. 



417 



is a circular plate of iron perforated in the middle, not al- 
ways of one size, but larger or smaller, to suit the strength 
or conveniency of the several candidates. It is referred to 
in "2 Henry IV." (ii. 4), by Falstaff, who assigns as one of 
the reasons why Prince Henry loves Poins : "Because their 
legs arc both of a bigness, and 'a plays at quoits well." 

Formerly, in the country, the rustics, not having the round 
perforated quoits to play with, used horse-shoes ; and in 
many places the quoit itself, to this day, is called a shoe. 

Running for the ring. This, according to Staunton, was 
the name of a sport, a ring having been one of the prizes 
formerly given in wrestling and running matches. Thus, in 
the "Taming of the Shrew" (i. i), Hortensio says: "He 
that runs fastest gets the ring." 

Runni)ig tJic figure of eight. Steevens says that this game 
is alluded to by Shakespeare in "A Midsummer-Night's 
Dream" (ii. i), where Titania speaks of the "quaint mazes 
in the wanton green." Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, in referring 
to this passage, says : " Several mazes of the kind here al- 
luded to are still preserved, having been kept up from time 
immemorial. On the top of Catherine Hill, Winchester, 
the usual play-place of the school, was a very perplexed 
and winding path, running in a very small space over a great 
deal of ground, called a" miz-maze." The senior boys obliged 
the juniors to tread it, to prevent the figure from being lost, 
and I believe it is still retained."' 

See-Saiv. Another name for this childish sport is that 
given by Falstaff in " 2 Henry IV." (ii. 4), where he calls it 
" riding the wild marc." Gay thus describes this well-known 
game : 

" Across the fallen oak the plank I laid, 
And myself pois'd against the tott'ring maid ; 
High leap'd the plank, adown Bu.xonia fell." 

Shove-Groat. The object of this game was to shake or 
push pieces of money on a board to reach certain marks. 
It is alluded to in " 2 Henry IV." (ii. 4), where Falstaff says : 

' See Milner's " History of Winchester," vol. ii. p. 155. 



41 8 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

** Quoit him down, Bardolph, like a shove-groat shiUing;" 
or, in other words, Bardolph was to quoit Pistol down-stairs 
as quickly as the smooth shilling — the shove-groat — flies 
along the board. In a statute of 33 Henry VIII., shove- 
groat is called a new game, and was probably originally 
played with the silver groat. The broad shilling of Edward 
VI. came afterwards to be used in this game, which was, no 
doubt, the same as shovel-board, with the exception that the 
latter was on a larger scale. Master Slender, in the " Mer- 
ry Wives of Windsor " (i. i), had his pocket picked of "two 
Edward shovel-boards, that cost me two shilling and two 
pence a-piece." Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, in describing the 
game in his "Archaic Dictionary," says that "a shilling or 
other smooth coin was placed on the extreme edge of the 
shovel -board, and propelled towards a mark by a smart 
stroke with the palm of the hand. It is mentioned under 
various names, according to the coin employed, as shove- 
groat,' etc. The game of shove-halfpenny is mentioned in 
the Times of April 25, 1845, '^s then played by the lower 
orders. According to Strutt, it " was analogous to the mod- 
ern pastime called Justice Jervis, or Jarvis, which is confined 
to common pot-houses." 

Snoivballs. These are alluded to in "Pericles" (iv. 6), 
and in the " Merry Wives of Windsor" (iii, 5). 

Span-counter. In this boyish game one throws a counter, 
or piece of money, which the other wins, if he can throw an- 
other so as to hit it, or lie within a span of it. In " 2 Henry 
VI." (iv. 2), Cade says : " Tell the king from me, that, for his 
father's sake, Henry the Fifth, in whose time boys w^ent to 
span-counter for French crowns, I am content he shall reign." 
It is called in France "tapper;" and in Swift's time was 
played with farthings, as he calls it " span-farthing."" 

' According to Douce, " Illustrations of Shakespeare" (1839, p. 280), 
it was known as " slide-groat," " slide-board," " slide-thrift," and " slip- 
thrift." See Strutt 's "Sports and Pastimes," 1876, pp. 16, 394, 398; 
Nares's " Glossary," vol. ii. p. 791 ; Brand's " Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. ii. 
p. 441. 

* See Strutt's " Sports and Pastimes," 1876, p. 491. 



SPORTS AND PASTIMES. 



419 



Stool -hall. This game, alluded to in the "Two Noble 
Kinsmen " (v. 2), was formerly popular among young women, 
and occasionally w^as played by persons of both sexes indis- 
criminately, as the following lines, from a song written by 
Durfey for his play of "' Don Quixote," acted at Dorset Gar- 
dens, in 1694, show:' 

" Down in a vale on a summer's day, 

All the lads and lasses met to be merry ; 
A match for kisses at stool-ball to play, 

And for cakes, and ale, and sider, and perry. 
Chorus — Come all, great, small, short, tall, away to stool-ball." 

Strutt informs us that this game, as played in the north, 
" consists in simply setting a stool upon the ground, and one 
of the players takes his place before it, while his antagonist, 
standing at a distance, tosses a ball with the intention of 
striking the stool ; and this is the business of the former to 
prevent by beating it away with the hand, reckoning one to 
the game for every stroke of the ball ; if, on the contrary, it 
should be missed by the hand and touch the stool, the players 
change places. The conqueror is he who strikes the ball 
most times before it touches the stool." 

Tennis. According to a story told by the old annalists, 
one of the most interesting historical events in connection 
with this game happened when Henry V. was meditating 
war against France. " The Dolphin," says Hall in his 
" Chronicle," " thynkyng King Henry to be given still to such 
plaies and lyght folies as he cxei'cised and used before the 
tyme that he was exalted to the Croune, sent to hym a tunne 
of tennis balles to plaie with, as who saied that he had better 
skill of tennis than of warre." On the foundation of this 
incident, as told by Holinshcd, Shakespeare has constructed 
his fine scene of the French Ambassadors' audience in 
" Henry V." (i. 2). As soon as the first Ambassador has 
given the Dauphin's message and insulting gift, the Eng- 
lish king speaks thus : 

■ Quoted by Strutt, " Sports and Pastimes," p. 166. 



420 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

" We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us ; 
His present and your pains we thanlc you for : 
When we have match'd our rackets to these balls, 
We will, in France, by God's grace, play a set 
Shall strike his father's crown into the hazard. 
Tell him, he hath made a match with such a wrangler 
That all the courts of France will be disturb'd 
With chases." 

In " Hamlet" (ii. i), Polonius speaks of this pastime, and 
alludes to " falling out at tennis." In the sixteenth century 
tennis-courts were common in England, and the establish- 
ment of such places was countenanced by the example of 
royalty. It is evident that Henry VII. was a tennis-player. 
In a MS. register of his expenditures, made in the thirteenth 
year of his reign, this entry occurs: "Item, for the king's 
loss at tennis, twelvepence ; for the loss of balls, threepence." 
Stow, in his " Survey of London," tells us that among the 
additions that King Henry VIII. made to Whitehall, were 
"divers fair tennis-courts, bowling-allies, and a cock-pit." 
Charles II. frequently diverted himself with playing at 
tennis, and had a particular kind of dress made for that 
purpose. Pericles, when he is shipwrecked and cast upon 
the coast of Pentapolis, addresses himself and the three fish- 
ermen whom he chances to meet thus (" Pericles," ii. i): 

" A man whom both the waters and the wind, 
In that vast tennis-court, have made the ball 
For them to play upon, entreats you pity him." 

In " Much Ado About Nothing" (iii. 2), Claudio, referring 
to Benedick, says : " the old ornament of his cheek hath 
already stuffed tennis-balls;"' and in "Henry V." (iii. 7), 
the Dauphin says his horse " bounds from the earth as if 
his entrails were hairs." Again, " bandy " was originally a 
term at tennis, to which Juliet refers in " Romeo and Ju- 
liet " (ii. 5), when speaking of her Nurse : 



' In " Love's Labour's Lost" (v. 2), the Princess speaks of "a set of 
wit well play'd ;" upon which Mr. Singer (" Shakespeare," vol. ii. p. 263) 
adds that "a set is a term at tennis for a game." 



SPORTS AND PASTIMES. 42 1 

" Had she affections, and warm youthful blood, 
She'd be as swift in motion as a ball ; 
My words would bandy her to my sweet love, 
And his to me." 

Also, King Lear (i. 4) says to Oswald : " Do you bandy 
looks with me, you rascal?" 

Tick-tack. This was a sort of backgammon, and is al- 
luded to by Lucio in " Measure for Measure" (i. 2) who, re- 
ferring to Claudio's unpleasant predicament, says: " I would 
be sorry should be thus foolishly lost at a game of tick-tack." 
In Weaver's "Lusty Juventus," Hipocrisye, seeing Lusty 
Juventus kiss Abhominable Lyuing, says: 

"What a hurly burly is here ! 
Smicke smacke, and all thys gere ! 
You well [will] to tyckc take, I fere. 
If thou had tyme." ' 

" Jouer au tric-trac " is used, too, in France in a wanton sense. 
Tray-trip. This was probably a game at cards, played 
with dice as well as with cards, the success in which chiefly 
depended upon the throwing of treys. Thus, in a satire 
called "Machivell's Dog" (161 7): 

" But, leaving cardes, let's go to dice a while, 
To passage, treitrippe, hazarde, or mumchance." 

In "Twelfth Night" (ii. 5), Sir Toby Belch asks: "Shall I 
play my freedom at tray-trip, and become thy bond-slave?" 
It may be remembered, too, that in "The Scornful Lady" 
of Beaumont and Fletcher (ii. i), the Chaplain complains 
that the Butler had broken his head, and being asked the 
reason, says, for 

" Reproving him at tra-trip, sir, for swearing." 

Some are of opinion that it resembled the game of hop- 
scotch, or Scotch-hop ; but this, .says Nares,' " seems to rest 
merely upon unauthorized conjecture." 

' Quoted by Dyce's " Glossary," p. 449 ; see Brand's " Pop. Antiq.," 
1849, vol. ii. p. 445. * " Glossary," vol. ii. p. .896. 



422 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



Troll-iny-danic. The game of Troll-madam, still familiar 
as Bagatelle, was borrowed from the French [Troii-madamc). 
One of its names was Pigeon-holes, because played on a 
board, at one end of which were a number of arches, like 
pigeon-holes, into which small balls had to be bowled. In 
"Winter's Tale" (iv. 2), it is mentioned by Autolycus, who, 
in answer to the Clown, says that the manner of fellow that 
robbed him was one that he had " known to go about with 
troll-my-dames." Cotgrave declares it as " the game called 
Trunkes, or the Hole." 

Triiinp. This was probably the triujiifo of the Italians, 
and the triovipJie of the French ^ — being perhaps of equal 
antiquity in England with priiuero. At the latter end of 
the sixteenth century it was very common among the in- 
ferior classes. There is, no doubt, a particular allusion to 
this game in " Antony and Cleopatra" (iv. 14), where Antony 
says : 

" the queen — 

Whose heart I thought I had, for she had mine ; 

Which, whilst it was mine, had annex'd unto't 

A miUion more, now lost — she, Eros, has 

Pack'd cards with Csesar, and false-play'd my glory 

Unto an enemy's triumph." 

The poet meant to say, that Cleopatra, by collusion, played 
the great game they were engaged in falsely, so as to sacri- 
fice Antony's fame to that of his enemy. There is an equivo- 
que between trump and triiimpJi. The game in question 
bore a very strong resemblance to our modern whist — the 
only points of dissimilarity being that more or less than four 
persons might play at trump ; that all the cards were not 
dealt out ; and that the dealer had the privilege of discard- 
' ing some, and taking others in from the stock. In Eliot's 
"Fruits for the French," 1593, it is called "a very common 
ale-house game in England." 

Wrestling. Of the many allusions that are given by 
Shakespeare to this pastime, we may quote the phrase " to 
catch on the hip," made use of by Shylock in the " Merchant 
of Venice " (i. 3), who, speaking of Antonio, says, 



SPORTS AND PASTIMES. 

"If I can catch him once upon the hip, 
I will feed fat the ancient grudge I bear him 



423 



— the meaning being, " to have at an entire advantage." ' 

The expression occurs again in " Othello" (ii. i), where lago 

says : 

" I'll have our Michael Cassio on the hip." 

Nares,' however, considers the phrase was derived from 
hunting; because, "when the animal pursued is seized upon 
the hip, it is finally disabled from flight." 

In "As You Like It" (ii. 3), where Adam speaks of the 
" bonny priser of the humorous duke," Singer considers that 
a priser was the phrase for a wrestler, a prise being a term 
in that sport for a grappling or hold taken." 

' Dyce's " Glossary," p. 208. " " Glossary," vol. i. p. 421. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

DANCES. 

We are indebted to Shakespeare for having bequeathed 
to us many interesting allusions to some of the old dances 
in use in his day, but which have long ago passed into ob- 
livion. As will be seen, these were of a very diverse char- 
acter, but, as has been remarked, were well suited to the 
merry doings of our forefathers ; and although in some cases 
they justly merited censure for their extravagant nature, yet 
the greater part of these sources of diversion were harmless. 
Indeed, no more pleasing picture can be imagined than that 
of a rustic sheep-shearing gathering in the olden times, when, 
the work over, the peasantry joined together in some simple 
dance, each one vieing with his neighbor to perform his part 
with as much grace as possible. 

Antic. This was a grotesque dance. In "Macbeth"' 
(iv. i), the witch, perceiving how Macbeth is affected by the 
horrible apparitions which he has seen, says to her sisters: 

" Come, sisters, cheer we up his sprites. 
And show the best of our delights. 
I'll charm the air to give a sound, 
While you perform your antic round." 

To quote another instance. Armado, in " Love's Labour's 
Lost" (v. i), says: 

" We will have, if this fadge not, an antique." 

Bcrgoniask Dance. According to Sir Thomas Hanmer, this 
was a dance after the manner of the peasants of Bergomasco, 
a county in Italy belonging to the Venetians. All the buf- 
foons in Italy affected to imitate the ridiculous jargon of 
that people, and from thence it became customary to mimic 
also their manner of dancing. In "A Midsummer-Night's 



DANCES, 



425 



Dream" (v. i), Bottom asks Theseus whether he would Hke 
"to hear a Bergomask dance," between two of their com- 
pany. 

Braivl. This was a kind of dance. It appears that sev- 
eral persons united hands in a circle, and gave one another 
continual shakes, the steps changing with the tune. With 
this dance balls were usually opened.' Kissing was occa- 
sionally introduced. In "Love's Labour's Lost" (iii. i), 
Moth asks his master : " Will you win your love with a 
French brawl." 

Canary. This was the name of a sprightly dance, the 
music to which consisted of two strains with eight bars in 
each ; an allusion to which is made by IMoth in " Love's 
Labour's Lost" (iii. i), who speaks of jigging off a tune at 
the tongue's end, and canary ing to it with the feet. And in 
"All's Well that End's Well" (ii. i), Lafeu tells the king 
that he has seen a medicine 

"that's able to breathe life into a stone, 
Quicken a rock, and make j^ou dance canary 
With spritely fire and motion." 

This dance is said to have originated in the Canary Isl- 
ands, an opinion, however, which has, says Dyce, been dis- 
puted.' 

Cinque -pace. This was so named from its steps being 
regulated by the number five: 

" Five was the number of the music's feet, 
Which still the dance did with five paces meet."^ 

In " Much Ado About Nothing" (ii. i), Shakespeare makes 
Beatrice make a quibble upon the term ; for after comparing 
wooing, wedding, and repenting to a Scotch jig, a measure, 



' Deuce's " Illustrations of Shakespeare," p. 134. 

2 See Chappell's " Popular Music of the Olden Time." 2d edition, 
vol. i. p. 368 ; Dyce's " Glossary," vol. i. p. 63. 

^ Quoted by Nares from Sir John Davies on " Dancing." Mr. Dyce, 
"Glossan,-," p. 81, says that Nares wrongly confounded this with the 
"gallard." 



426 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



and a cinque-pace, she says : " then comes repentance, and, 
with his bad legs, falls into the cinque-pace faster and faster, 
till he sink into his grave." A further reference occurs in 
"Twelfth Night" (i. 3), by Sir Toby Belch, who calls it a 
" sink-a-pace." 

Co7-anto. An allusion to this dance, which appears to have 
been of a very lively and rapid character, is made in " Henry 
V." (iii. 5), where the Duke of Bourbon describes it as the 
" swift coranto ;" and in '' All's Well that Ends Well" (ii. 3) 
Lafeu refers to it. A further notice of it occurs in " Twelfth 
Night" (i. 3), in the passage where Sir Toby Belch speaks 
of " coming home in a coranto." 

Fading. Malone quotes a passage from " Sportive Wit," 
1666, which implies that this was a rustic dance : 

" The courtiers scorn us country clowns, 
We country clowns do scorn the court ; 

We can be as merry upon the downs 
As you at midnight with all your sport, 

With a. fading, viiXh a fading." 

It would appear, also, from a letter appended to Boswell's 
edition of Malone, that it was an Irish dance, and that it 
was practised, upon rejoicing occasions, as recently as 1803, 
the date of the letter: 

" This dance is still practised on rejoicing occasions in many 
parts of Ireland ; a king and queen are chosen from amongst 
the young persons who are the best dancers ; the queen car- 
ries a garland composed of two hoops placed at right angles, 
and fastened to a handle ; the hoops are covered with flowers 
and ribbons ; you have seen it, I dare say, with the May- 
maids. Frequently in the course of the dance the king and 
queen lift up their joined hands as high as they can, she still 
holding the garland in the other. The most remote couple 
from the king and queen first pass under; all the rest of the 
line linked together follow in succession. When the last has 
passed, the king and queen suddenly face about and front 
their companions ; this is often repeated during the dance, 
and the various undulations are pretty enough, resembling 
the movements of a serpent. The dancers on the first of 



DANCES. 427 

May visit such newly wedded pairs of a certain rank as have 
been married since last May-day in the neighborhood, who 
commonly bestow on them a stuffed ball richly decked w ith 
gold and silver lace, and accompanied with a present in 
money, to regale themselves after the dance. This dance is 
practised when the bonfires are lighted up, the queen hailing 
the return of summer in a popular Irish song beginning: 

' We lead on summer — see ! she follows in our train.' " 

In the "Winter's Tale" (iv. 4), Shakespeare seems to 
allude to this dance where he makes the servant, speaking 
of the pedler, say : " he has the prettiest love songs for 
maids; so without bawdry, which is strange; with such deli- 
cate burdens of ' dildos ' and 'fadings.' " Some commenta- 
tors,' however, consider that only the song is meant. 

I/ay. Douce'' says this dance was borrowed by us from 
the French, and is classed among the " brawls " in Thoinot 
Arbeau's " Orchesographie " (1588). In "Love's Labour's 
Lost " (v. i). Dull says : " I w'ill play on tabor to the Wor- 
thies, and let them dance their hay." 

y^>. Besides meaning a merry, sprightly dance, a jig also 
implied a coarse sort of comic entertainment, in which sense 
it is probably used by Hamlet (ii. 2): " He's for a jig or a 
tale of bawdry." " It seems," says Mr. Collier,' " to have 
been a ludicrous composition in rhyme, sung, or said, by the 
clown, and accompanied by dancing and playing upon the 
pipe and tabor,'" an instance of which perhaps occurs in the 
Clown's song at the close of " Twelfth Night :" 

" When that I was and a little tiny boy." 



' See Knight's " Pictorial Shakespeare," vol. ii. p. 375 ; Dyce's " Glos- 
sary," 1836, p. 152 ; " British Popular Customs," 1876, pp. 276, 277. See 
also Chappell's " Popular Music of the Olden Time," 2d edition, vol. i. 
p. 235 ; Nares's " Glossary," vol. i. p. 292. 

- " Illustrations of Shakespeare," p. 146. 

■^ " History of English Dramatic Poetry-," vol. iii. p. 380; see Dyce's 
" Glossary," p. 229 ; Nares's " Glossary," vol. i. p. 450 ; Singer's " Shake- 
speare," vol. ix. pp. 198, 219. 

* " Hamlet:" iii. 2 : "your only jig-maker." 



428 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

Fletcher, in the Prologue to the " Fair Maid of the Inn," 
says : 

" A jig should be clapt at, and every rhyme 
Praised and applauded by a clamorous chime." 

Among the allusions to this dance we may quote one in 
" Much Ado About Nothing" (ii. i), where Beatrice com- 
pares wooing to a Scotch jig; and another in "Twelfth 
Night " (i. 3), where Sir Toby Belch says, his " very walk 
should be a jig." 

Lavolta. According to Florio, the lavolta is a kind of 
turning French dance, in which the man turns the woman 
round several times, and then assists her in making a high 
spring or cabriole. It is thus described by Sir John Davies: 

" Yet is there one the most delightful kind, 

A loftie jumping, or a leaping round, 
Where arme in arme two dauncers are entwined, 

And whirle themselves, with strict embracements bound ; 
And still their feet an anapest do sound. 

An anapest is all their musicks song, 
Whose first two feet are short, and third is long." 

Douce,' however, considers it to be of Italian origin, and 
says, " It passed from Italy into Provence and the rest of 
France, and thence into England." Scot, too, in his " Dis- 
covery of Witchcraft," thus speaks of it: "He saith, that 
these night-walking, or rather night-dancing, witches, brought 
out of Italic into France that dance which is called la VoltaT 
Shakespeare, in his " Henry V." (iii. 5), makes the Duke of 
Bourbon allude to it : 

"They bid us to the English dancing-schools, 
And teach lavoltas high, and swift corantos." 

Again, in " Troilus and Cressida " (iv. 4), Troilus says: 

" I cannot sing. 
Nor heel the high lavolt." 

' " Illustrations of Shakespeare," p. 301 ; see Nares's " Glossary," vol. 
ii. p. 498. 



DANCES. 



429 



Light o Love. This was an old dance tune, and was a 
proverbial expression for levity, especially in love matters.' 
In '' Much Ado About Nothing " (iii. 4), Margaret says : 
" Clap's into ' Light o' love ;' that goes without a burden ; 
do you sing it, and I'll dance it;" to which Beatrice an- 
swers : " Yea, light o' love, Vv'itli your heels." 

In " Two Gentlemen of Verona" (i. 2), it is alluded to : 

•" 'Julia. Best sing it to the tune of ' Light o' love.' 
Liccctta. It is too heavy for so light a tune." 

In the '• Two Noble Kinsmen " (v. 2), we read : 

" He'll dance the morris twenty mile an hour. 
And gallops to the tune of ' Light o' love.' " 

And in Beaumont and Fletcher's " Chances" (i. 3), I'rederic 
says : " Sure he has encounter'd some light-o'-love or other." 

Pavan. This was a grave and majestic dance, in which 
the gentlemen wore their caps, swords, and mantles, and the 
ladies their long robes and trains. The dancers stepped 
round the room and then crossed in the middle, trailing 
their garments on the ground, ''the motion whereof," says 
Sir J. Hawkins, " resembled that of a peacock's tail." It is 
alluded to in " Twelfth Night " (v. i) by Sir Toby : " A passy- 
mcasures pavin," although the reading of this passage is 
uncertain, the editors of the "Globe" edition substituting 
pauyn. 

It has been conjectured that the " passy-measure galliard," 
and the "passy-measure pavan" were only two different 
measures of the same dance, from the \\.-aX\-&.x\ passai)ic:::::o'.' 

Roundel. This was also called the " round," a dance of a 
circular kind, and is probably referred to by Titania in "A 
Midsummer-Night's Dream " (ii. 2), where she says to her 
train : ' 

" Come now, a roundel and a fairy song.'' 



' Nares's "Glossary," vol. ii. p. 510. 
^ See Dyce, vol. iii. p. 412, note 121. 

^ Roundel also meant a song. Mr. Dyce considers the dance is here 
meant. 



430 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



Ben Jonson, in the " Tale of a Tub," ' seems to call the rings, 
which such fairy dances are supposed to make, roundels. 

" I'll have no roundels, I, in the queen's paths." 

Satyrs' Dance. A dance of satyrs was a not uncommon 
entertainment in Shakespeare's day, or even at an earlier 
period.^ It was not confined to England, and has been 
rendered memorable by the fearful accident with which it 
was accompanied at the Court of France in 1392, a graphic 
description of which has been recorded by Froissart. In 
the " Winter's Tale " (iv. 4), the satyrs' dance is alluded to 
by the Servant, who says : " Master, there is three carters, 
three shepherds, three neat-herds, three swine-herds, that 
have made themselves all men of hair; they call themselves 
Saltiers : and they have a dance which the wenches say is a 
gallimaufry of gambols, because they are not in't." In a 
book of songs composed by Thomas Ravenscroft and oth- 
ers, in the time of Shakespeare, we find one ^ called the 
" Satyres' daunce." It is for four voices, and is as follows: 

" Round a round, a rounda, keepe your ring 
To the glorious sunne we sing. 

Hoe, hoe ! 

He that weares the flaming rayes, 
And the imperiall crowne of bayes, 
Him with shoutes and songs we praise. 

Hoe, hoe ! 

That in his bountee would vouchsafe to grace 
The humble sylvanes and their shaggy race." 

Sword -dance. In olden times there were sev^eral kinds 
of sword-dances, most of w^hich afforded opportunities for 
the display of skill. In "Antony and Cleopatra" (iii. 11), 

' See Singer's " Shakespeare," vol. ii. p. 333. 

"^ See Knight's " Pictorial Shakespeare," vol. ii. p. 384 ; Singer's 
"Shakespeare," vol. iv. p. 85; Boswell's "Shakespeare," vol. xiv. p. 

371- 

^ See Douce's " Illustrations of Shakespeare," p. 222. 



DANCES. 



431 



there seems to be an allusion to this custom, where Antony, 
speaking of Caesar, says : ' 

" he, at Philippi, kept 
His sword e'en like a dancer." 

And in "All's Well that Ends Well" (ii. i), where Bertram, 
lamenting that he is kept from the wars, adds : 

" I shall stay here the forehorse to a smock, 
Creaking my shoes on the plain masonry, 
Till honour be bought up, and no sword worn 
But one to dance with." 

In "Titus Andronicus " (ii. i), too, Demetrius says to 

Chiron : 

" Why, bo3% although our mother, unadvis'd 

Gave you a dancing-rapier by your side." 

Tread a Measure, to which the King refers in " Love's 
Labour's Lost" (v. 2), when he tells Boyet to tell Rosaline 

" we have measur'd many miles, 
To tread a measure with her on this grass," 

was a grave solemn dance, with slow and measured steps, 
like the minuet. As it was of so solemn a nature, it was 
performed" at public entertainments in the Inns of Court, 
and it was " not unusual, nor thought inconsistent, for the 
first characters in the law to bear a part in treading a 
measure." 

Trip and Go was the name of a favorite morris-dance, and 
appears, says Mr. Chappell, in his " Popular Music of the 
Olden Times," etc. (2d edition, vol. i. p. 131), to have become 
a proverbial expression. It is used in " Love's Labour's 
Lost " (iv. 2). 

Up-spring. From the following passage, in Chapman's 

' See Strutt's " Sports and Pastimes," 1876, pp. 300, 301 ; Douce's " Il- 
lustrations of Shakespeare," p. 193. 

"Singer's "Shakespeare," vol. ii. p. 269; Sir Christopher Hatton 
was famous for it. 



432 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



" Alphonsus, Emperor of Germany," it would seem that 
this was a German dance : 

'• We Germans have no changes in our dances ; 
An almain and an up-spring, that is all." 

Karl Elze/ who, a few years ago, reprinted Chapman's 
"Alphonsus" at Leipsic, says that the word "up-spring" 
" is the ' Hiipfauf,' the last and wildest dance at the old 
German merry-makings. No epithet could there be more 
appropriate to this drunken dance than Shakespeare's szcag- 
gcring^' in " Hamlet " (i. 4) : 

" The king doth wake to-night, and takes his rouse, 
Keeps wassail, and the swaggering up-spring reels." 

' Quoted in Dyce*s " Glossary," p. 476. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

PUNISHMENTS. 

Shakespeare has not omitted to notice many of the 
punishments which were in use in years gone by ; the scat- 
tered allusions to these being interesting in so far as they 
serve to illustrate the domestic manners and customs of our 
forefathers. Happily, however, these cruel tortures, which 
darken the pages of history, have long ago passed into ob- 
livion ; and at the present day it is difficult to believe that 
such barbarous practices could ever have been tolerated in 
any civilized country. The horrible punishment of " boiling 
to death," is mentioned in " Twelfth Night " (ii. 5), where 
Fabian says: "If I lose a scruple of this sport, let me be 
boiled to death with melancholy," In "Winter's Tale" 
(iii. 2), Paulina inquires : 

" What studied torments, tyrant, hast for me ? 
What wheels? racks? fires? What flaying? boiling 
In leads or oils ? What old or newer torture 
Must I receive?" 

There seems to be an indirect allusion to this punishment 
in "The Two Noble Kinsmen" (iv. 3), where the Gaoler's 
Daughter in her madness speaks of those who " are mad, or 
hang, or drown themselves, being put into a caldron of lead 
and usurer's grease, and there boiling like a gammon of 
bacon that will never be enough," 

The practice of holding burning basins before the eyes 
of captives, to destroy their eyesight, is probably alluded to 
by Macbeth (iv, i), in the passage where the apparitions are 
presented to him by the witches : 

" Thou art too like the spirit of Banquo ; down f 
Thy crown does sear mine eyeballs." ' 



' HalliwcU-Phillippo's " Index to Shakespeare," p. 36. 
28 



434 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



In " Antony and Cleopatra " (ii. 4), soaking in brine as a 
punishment is referred to by Cleopatra, who says to the 
messenger : 

"Thou shalt be whipp'd with wire, and stew'd in brine, 
Smarting in lingering pickle." 

Drowning by the tide, a method of punishing criminals, is 
probably noticed in " The Tempest " (i. i), by Antonio; 

" We are merely cheated of our lives by drunkards. 
This wide-chapp'd rascal — would thou might'st lie drowning 
The washing of ten tides !" 

Baffle. This was formerly a punishment of infamy inflict- 
ed on recreant knights, one part of which consisted in hang- 
ing them up by the heels, to which Falstaff probably refers 
in " I Henry IV." (i. 2), where he says to the prince, " call 
me villain, and baffle me." And, further on (ii. 4) : " if thou 
dost it half so gravely, so majestically, both in word and 
matter, hang me up by the heels for a rabbit-sucker, or a 
poulter's hare." ' In " 2 Henry IV." (i. 2), the Chief Justice 
tells Falstaff that " to punish him by the heels would amend 
the attention of his ears." And in " All's Well that Ends 
Well " (iv. 3), where the lord relates how Parolles has " sat 
in the stocks all night," Bertram says: "his heels have de- 
served it, in usurping his spurs so long." 

Spenser, in his " Fairy Queen " (vi. 7), thus describes this 
mode of punishment : 

" And after all, for greater infamie 
He by the heels him hung upon a tree, 
And baf^i'd so, that all which passed by 
The picture of his punishment might see." 

The appropriate term, too, for chopping off the spurs of a 
knight when he was to be degraded, was " hack " — a custom 
to which, it has been suggested, Mrs. Page alludes in the 



' See Nares's " Glossary," vol. i. p. 



PUNISHMENTS. 435 

"Merry Wives of Windsor" (ii. i):' "What?— Sir Alice 
Ford ! These knights will hack, and so thou shouldst not 
alter the article of thy gentry.'" 

Mr. Dyce," however, says the most probable meaning of 
this obscure passage is, that there is an allusion to the ex- 
travagant number of knights created by King James, and 
that hack is equivalent to " become cheap or vulgar." 

It appears, too, that in days gone by the arms, etc., of 
traitors and rebels might be defaced. Thus, in " Richard 
II." (ii. 3), Berkeley tells Bolingbroke : 

" Mistake me not, my lord ; 'tis not my meaning 
To raze one title of your honour out." 

Upon which passage we may quote from Camden's " Re- 
mains " (1605, p. 186) : " How the names of them, which for 
capital crimes against majestic, were erased out of the public 
records, tables, and registers, or forbidden to be borne by 
their posteritie, when their memory was damned, I could 
show at large." In the following act (iii. i) Bolingbroke 
further relates how his enemies had : 

" Dispark'd my parks, and fell'd my forest woods. 
From mine own windows torn my household coat, 
Raz'd out my impress, leaving me no sign." 

Bilboes. These were a kind of stocks or fetters used at 

sea to confine prisoners, of which Hamlet speaks to Horatio 

(v. 2) : 

" Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting. 

That would not let me sleep : methought I lay 

Worse than the mutines in the bilboes." 

This punishment is thus described by Steevens: "The bil- 
boes is a bar of iron with fetters annexed to it, by which 
mutinous or disorderly sailors were anciently linked togeth- 
er. The word is derived from Bilboa, a place in Spain where 

' Mr. HaUiwell-Phillipps, in his " Handbook Inde.x to the Works of 
Shakespeare" (i866, p. 231), suggests this meaning. 
"^ See Nares's " Glossary," vol. i. p. 397. 
' Dyce''s " Glossary," p. 197. 



436 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



instruments of steel were fabricated in the utmost perfec- 
tion. To understand Shakespeare's alkision completely, it 
should be known that, as these fetters connect the legs of 
the offenders very close together, their attempts to rest must 
be as fruitless as those of Hamlet, in whose mind ' there 
was a kind of fighting that would not let him sleep.' Ev- 
ery motion of one must disturb his partner in confinement. 
The bilboes are still shown in the Tower of London, among 
the other spoils of the Spanish Armada." ' 

Brand. — The branding of criminals is indirectly alluded 
to in " 2 Henry VI." (v. 2), by Young Clifford, who calls the 
Duke of Richmond a " foul stigmatick," which properly 
meant " a person who had been branded with a hot iron for 
some crime, one notably defamed for naughtiness." The 
practice was abolished by law in the year 1822. 

The practice, too, of making persons convicted of perjury 
wear papers, while undergoing punishment, descriptive of 
their offence, is spoken of in " Love's Labour's Lost " (iv. 3), 
where Biron says of Longaville : 

"Why, he comes in like a perjure, wearing papers." 

Holinshed relates how Wolsey " so punished a perjure 
with open punishment and open paper-wearing that in his 
time it was disused." 

Breech. This old term to whip or punish as a school-boy 
is noticed in the " Taming of the Shrew " (iii. i) : 

" I am no breeching scholar in the schools ; 
I'll not be tied to hours nor 'pointed times" 

— breeching being equivalent to " liable to be whipped." 

In "Merry Wives of Windsor" (iv. i). Sir Hugh Evans 
tells the boy page : " If you forget your ' quies,' your ' quaes,' 
and your ' quods,' you must be preeches " (breeched). 

Crown. A burning crown, as the punishment of regi- 

' Bilbo was also a rapier or sword ; thus, in " Merry Wives of Wind- 
sor" (iii. 5), Falstaff says to Ford : " I suffered the pangs of three sev- 
eral deaths ; first, an intolerable fright, to be detected . . . next, to be 
compassed, like a good bilbo . . . hilt to point," etc. 



PUNISHMENTS. ^^-r 

cides or other criminals, is probably alluded to by Anne in 
"Richard III." (iv. i): 

" O, would to God that the inclusive verge 
Of golden metal, that must round my brow, 
Were red-hot steel, to sear me to the brain !" 

Mr. Singer,' in a note on this passage, quotes from Chet- 
tle's "Tragedy of Hoffman " (1631), where this punishment 
is introduced : 

" Fix on thy master's head my burning crown." 

And again : 

" Was adjudg'd 
To have his head sear'd with a burning crown." 

The Earl of Athol, who was executed for the murder of 
James I. of Scotland, was, before his death, crowned with a 
hot iron. In some of the monkish accounts of a place of 
future torments, a burning crown is appropriated to those 
who deprived any lawful monarch of his kingdom. 

Pillory. This old mode of punishment is referred to by 
Launce in the " Two Gentlemen of Verona " (iv. 4), where 
he speaks of having "stood on the pillory." In "Taming 
of the Shrew" (ii. i), Hortensio, when he tells Baptista how 
he had been struck by Katharina because " I did but tell her 
she mistook her frets," adds: 

"she struck me on the head. 
And through the instrument my pate made way: 
And there I stood amazed for a while, 
As on a pillory, looking through the lute." 

It has been suggested that there may be an allusion to 
the pillory in "Measure for IMeasure " (v. i), where Lucio 
says to the duke, disguised in his friar's hood: "you must 
be hooded, must you? show your knave's visage, with a 
pox to you ! show your sheep-biting face, and be hanged 
an hour !" The alleged crime was not capital, and suspen- 

' " Shakespeare," vol. vi. p. 485 ; see " Boswell's Life of Johnson," 
vol. ii. p. 6. 



438 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



sion in the pillory for an hour was all that the speaker in- 
tended."' 

Press. Several allusions occur to this species of torture, 
applied to contumacious felons. It was also, says Malone, 
" formerly inflicted on those persons who, being indicted, 
refused to plead. In consequence of their silence, they were 
pressed to death by a heavy weight laid upon the stomach." 
In "Much Ado About Nothing" (iii. i), Hero says of Bea- 
trice: 

" she would laugh me 
Out of myself, press me to death with wit." 

In " Richard II." (iii. 4) the Queen exclaims: 

" O, I am press'd to death, through want of speaking !'' 

And in " Measure for Measure" (v. i), Lucio tells the Duke 
that, " Marrying a punk, my lord, is pressing to death, 
whipping, and hanging." 

In the " Perfect Account of the Daily Intelligence " 
(April i6th, 165 1), we find it recorded: " Mond., April 14th. 
This Session, at the Old Bailey, were four men pressed to 
death that were all in one robbery, and, out of obstinacy 
and contempt of the Court, stood mute, and refused to 
plead." This punishment was not abolished until by stat- 
ute 12 George III. c. 20. 

Rack. According to Mr. Blackstone, this " was utterly 
unknown to the law of England ; though once, when the 
Dukes of Exeter and Suffolk, and other ministers of Henry 
VI., had laid a design to introduce the civil law into this 
kingdom as a rule of government, for the beginning thereof 
they erected a rack of torture, which was called, in derision, 
the Duke of Exeter's daughter; and still remains in the 
Tower of London, where it was occasionally used as an en- 
gine of state, not of law, more than once in the reign of 
Queen Elizabeth. But when, upon the assassination of Vil- 

' Nares's "Glossary," vol. ii. p. 661 ; see Douce's " Illustrations of 
Shakespeare," 1839, pp. 90, 91, 109; Brand's "Pop. Antiq.," vol. iii. 
p. III. 



PUNISHMENTS. 



439 



Hers, Duke of Buckingham, it was proposed, in the Privy 
Council, to put the assassin to the rack, in order to discover 
liis accompHces, the judges (being consulted) declared unan- 
imously, to their own honor and the honor of the English 
law, that no such proceeding was allowable by the law of 
England." Mr. Hallam observes that, though the English 
law never recognized the use of torture, yet there were 
many instances of its employment in the reign of Elizabeth 
and James ; and, among others, in the case of the Gunpow- 
der Plot. He further adds, in the latter part of the reign 
of Elizabeth " the rack seldom stood idle in the Tower." 
Of the many allusions to this torture may be mentioned Se- 
bastian's word in "Twelfth Night" (v. i): 

" Antonio ! O my dear Antonio ! 
How have the hours rack'd and tortured me, 
Since I have lost thee." 

In " Measure for Measure " (v. i), Escalus orders the " un- 
reverend and unhallow'd friar" (the Duke disguised) to be 
taken to the rack : 

" Take him hence ; to the rack with him !— We'll touse you 
Joint by joint." 

The engine, which .sometimes meant the rack, is spoken 
of in " King Lear " (i. 4) : 

" Which, like an engine, wrench'd my frame of nature 
From the fix'd place." ' 

So, in Beaumont and Fletcher's " Night Walker" (iv. 5) : 

" Their souls shot through with adders, torn on engines." 

Once more, in " Measure for Measure " (ii. i), where Escalus 
tells how 

" Some run from brakes of ice, and answer none " 

' It also meant a warlike engine, as in "Coriolanus," v. 4: "When 
he walks, he moves like an engine, and the ground shrinks before his 
treading;"' so, also, in " Troilus and Cressida," ii. 3. 



440 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



— a passage which Mr. Dyce would thus read : 

" Some run from brakes of vice." 

It has been suggested that there is an allusion to " en- 
gines of torture," although, owing to the many significa- 
tions of the word " brake," its meaning here has been much 
disputed.' 

Stocks. This old-fashioned mode of punishment is the 
subject of frequent allusion by Shakespeare. Thus, Launce, 
in the " Two Gentlemen of Verona " (iv. 4), says : " I have sat 
in the stocks for puddings he hath stolen." In "All's Well 
that Ends Well " (iv. 3), Bertram says : " Come, bring forth 
this counterfeit module, has deceived me, like a double- 
meaning prophesier." Whereupon one of the French lords 
adds : " Bring him forth : has sat i' the stocks all night, 
poor gallant knave." Volumnia says of Coriolanus (v. 3) : 

"There's no man in the world 
More bound to's mother; yet here he lets me prate 
Like one i' the stocks." 

Again, in the "Comedy of Errors" (iii. i). Luce speaks of 
"a pair of stocks in the town," and in " King Lear" (ii. 2), 
Cornwall, referring to Kent, says : 

" Fetch forth the stocks I — 
You stubborn ancient knave.'' 

It would seem that formerly, in great houses, as in some 
colleges, there were movable stocks for the correction of 
the servants. Putting a person in the stocks, too, was an 
exhibition familiar to the ancient stage. In " Hick Scorn- 
er,"'' printed in the reign of Henry VHL, Pity is placed in 
the stocks, and left there until he is freed " by Perseverance 
and Contemplacyon." 

Strappado. This was a military punishment, by which 
the unfortunate sufferer was cruelly tortured in the follow- 

> See Dyce's " Glossary," p. 49 ; Halliwell-Phillipps's " Handbook 
Index to Shakespeare," p. 56 ; Nares's " Glossary," vol. i. p. 104. 
* It is reprinted in Hawkins's " English Drama," 1773. 



PUNISHMENTS. 



441 



ing way: a rope being fastened under his arms, he was 
drawn up by a pulley to the top of a high beam, and then 
suddenly let down with a jerk. The result usually was a 
dislocation of the shoulder-blade. In " i Henry IV." (ii. 4), 
it is referred to by Falstaff, who tells Poins : " were I at 
the strappado, or all the racks in the world, I would not tell 
you on compulsion." At Paris, says Douce,' "there was a 
spot called Vcstrapadc, in the Faubourg St. Jacques, where 
soldiers received this punishment. The machine, whence 
the place took its name, remained fixed like a perpetual 
gallows." The term is probably derived from the Italian 
strapparc, to pull or draw v/ith violence. 

Toss in a Sieve. This punishment, according to Cotgrave, 
was inflicted " on such as committed gross absurdities." In 
" I Henry VI." (i. 3), Gloster says to the Bishop of Win- 
chester: 

" I'll canvass thee in thy broad cardinal's hat, 
If thou proceed in this thy insolence." 

It is alluded to in Davenant's " Cruel Brother" (1630): 
" I'll sift and winow him in an old hat." 

Wheel. The punishment of the wheel was not known at 
Rome, but we read of Mettius Tuffetius being torn asunder 
by qnadrigec driven in opposite directions. As Shakespeare, 
remarks Malone, "has coupled this species of punishment 
with another that certainly was unknown to ancient Rome, 
it is highly probable that he was not apprised of the story 
of Mettius Tuffetius, and that in this, as in various other 
instances, the practice of his own times was in his thoughts, 
for in 1594 John Chastcl had been thus executed in France 
for attempting to assassinate Henry IV." 

Coriolanus (iii. 2) says : 

" Let them pull all about mine ears, present me 
Death on the wheel, or at wild horses' heels." 

Whipping. Three centuries ago this mode of punishment 
was carried to a cruel extent. By an act passed in the 2d year 

' " Illustrations of Shakespeare," pp. 263, 264 ; see Dyce's " Glossary," 

p. 423. 



. ^2 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

of Henry VIII., vagrants were to be carried to some market- 
town, or other place, and there tied to the end of a cart, 
naked, and beaten with whips throughout such market- 
town, or other place, till the body should be bloody by rea- 
son of such whipping." The punishment was afterwards 
slightly mitigated, for, by a statute passed in 39th of Eliz- 
abeth's reign, vagrants " were only to be stripped naked from 
the middle upwards, and whipped till the body should be 
bloody." The stocks were often so constructed as to serve 
both for stocks and whipping-posts.' Among the numerous 
references to this punishment by Shakespeare, we may quote 
" 2 Henry IV." (v. 4), where the beadle says of Hostess 
Quickly: "The constables have delivered her over to me, 
and she shall have whipping-cheer enough, I warrant her." 
In the " Taming of the Shrew " (i. i), Gremio says, speaking 
of Katharina, " I had as lief take her dowry with this condi- 
tion,— to be whipped at the high-cross every morning," in 
allusion to what Hortensio had just said: " why, man, there 
be good fellows in the worid, an a man could light on them, 
would take her with all faults, and money enough." ^ In " 2 
Henry VI." (ii. i), Gloster orders Simpcox and his wife to 

" be whipped through every market-town, 
Till they come to Berwick, from whence they came."' 

Wisp. This was a punishment for a scold.' It appears 
that " a wisp, or small twist of straw or hay, was often ap- 
plied as a mark of opprobrium to an immodest woman, a 
scold, or similar offender; even, therefore, the showing it 
to a woman, was considered a grievous affront." In " 3 
Henry VI." (ii. 2) Edward says of Queen Margaret : 

" A wisp of straw were worth a thousand crowns, 
To make this shameless callat = know herself." 



' See " Book of Days." vol. i. pp. 598. 599- 
' Nares's " Glossary," vol. ii. p. 965. 

' " Callat,'" an immodest woman, also applied to a scold. Cf. " Win- 
ter's Tale," ii. 3 : , ,, . 

"A callat 

Of boundless tongue, who late hath beat her husband, 
And now baits me." 



PUNISHMENTS. 



443 



A wisp, adds Nares, seems to have been the badge of the 
scolding woman in the ceremony of Skimmington ; ' an allu- 
sion to which is given in a " Dialogue between John and 
Jone, striving who shall wear the breeches," in the " Pleas- 
ures of Poetry," cited by Malonc : 

" Good, gentle Jone, with-holcle thy handes. 

This once let me entreat thee, 
And make me promise never more. 

That thou shalt mind to beat me . 
For fear thou wear the wispe, good wife, 

And make our neighbours ride." 

In Nash's " Pierce Pennilesse " (i 593) there is also an amus- 
ing allusion to it : " Why, thou errant butter-whore, thou 
cotquean and scrattop of scolds, wilt thou never leave afflict- 
ing a dead carcasse ? continually read the rhetorick lecture 
of Ramme-alley ? a wispe, a wispe, you kitchen-stuffe wrang- 
ler." 

' Skimmington was a burlesque ceremony in ridicule of a man beaten 
by his wife, See Brand's " Pop. Antiq.," vol. ii. pp. 191, 192. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

PROVERBS. 

In the present chapter are collected together the chief 
proverbs either quoted or alhided to by Shakespeare. Many 
of these are famihar to most readers, but have gained an 
additional interest by reason of their connection with the 
poet's writings. At the same time, it may be noted that 
very many of Shakespeare's pithy sayings have, since his 
day, passed into proverbs, and have taken their place in this 
class of literature. It is curious to notice, as Mrs. Cowden- 
Clarke remarks,' how " Shakespeare has paraphrased some 
of our commonest proverbs in his own choice and elegant 
diction." Thus, " Make hay while the sun shines " becomes 

" The sun shines hot ; and if we use delay, 
Cold biting winter mars our hoped-for hay," 

a statement which applies to numerous other proverbial 
sayings. 

"A black man is a jewel in a fair w^oman's eyes." In the 
" Two Gentlemen of Verona " (v. 2), the following passage 
is an amusing illustration of the above: 

" Thurio. What says she to my face ? 

Protetis. She says it is a fair one. 

Thurio. Nay then, the wanton lies ; my face is black. 

Proteus. But pearls are fair ; and the old saying is, 
Black men are pearls in beauteous ladies' eyes." 

In "Titus Andronicus" (v. i) there is a further allusion 
to this proverb, where Lucius says of Aaron, 

" This is the pearl that pleas'd your empress' eye." 

^ "Shakespeare Proverbs,'' 1858. 



PROVERBS. 



445 



" A beggar marries a wife and lice." So in " King Lear " 

(iii. 2), Song : 

" The cod-piece that will house, 

Before the head has any, 

The head and he shall louse ; 

So beggars marry many." 

Thus it is also said : " A beggar payeth a benefit with a 
louse." 

" A cunning knave needs no broker." This old proverb 
is quoted by Hume, in " 2 Henry VI." (i. 2): 

" A crafty knave does need no broker." 

" A curst cur must be tied short." With this proverb we 
may compare what Sir Toby says in " Twelfth Night " (iii. 2), 
to Sir Andrew : " Go, write it in a martial hand ; be curst 
and brief." 

" A drop hollows the stone," or " many drops pierce the 
stone." We may compare " 3 Henry VI." (iii. 2), " much 
rain wears the marble," and also the messenger's words 
(ii. i), when he relates how "the noble Duke of York was 

slain :" 

" Environed he was with many foes ; 
And stood against them, as the hope of Troy 
Against the Greeks, that would have enter'd Troy. 
But Hercules himself must yield to odds ; 
And many strokes, though with a little axe. 
Hew down and fell the hardest-timber'd oak. 

"A finger in every pie." So, in "Henry VIII." (i. i), 
Buckingham says of Wolsc}- : 

" no man's pie is freed 
From his ambitious finger." 

To the same purport is the following proverb : ' " He had 
a finger in the pie when he burnt his nail off." 

" A fool's bolt is soon shot," Quoted by Duke of Orleans 
in *' Henry V." (iii. 7). With this we may compare the 
French : " De fol juge breve sentence." '^ 

• Bohn's "Handbook of Proverbs," p. 159. 
'^ Ibid. p. 94. 



446 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

" A friend at court is as good as a penny in the purse." 
j y So, in "2 Henry IV." (v. i), Shallow says: "a friend i' the 
court is better than a penny in purse." The French equiv- 
alent of this saying is: " Bon fait avoir ami en cour, car le 
proces en est plus court." 

"A little pot's soon hot." Grumio, in " Taming of the 
Shrew" (iv. i), uses this familiar proverb: "were not I a 
little pot, and soon hot, my very lips might freeze to my 
teeth," etc. 

" A pox of the devil " (" Henry V.," iii. 7). 

"A smoky chimney and a scolding wife are two bad com- 
y^ panions." There are various versions of this proverb. Ray 
gives the following : " Smoke, raining into the house, and a 
scolding wife, will make a man run out of doors." 

Hotspur, in " i Henry IV." (iii. i), says of Glendower : 

" O, he's as tedious 
As a tired horse, a railing wife ; 
Worse than a smoky house." 

'• A snake lies hidden in the grass." This, as Mr. Green' 
remarks, is no unfrequent proverb, and the idea is often 
made use of by Shakespeare. Thus, in " 2 Henry VI." (iii. i), 
Margaret declares to the attendant nobles : 

" Henry my lord is cold in great aflfairs, 
Too full of foolish pity : and Gloster's show 
Beguiles him, as the mournful crocodile 
With sorrow snares relenting passengers, 
Or as the snake, roU'd in a flowering bank, 
With shining checker'd slough, doth sting a child. 
That for the beauty thinks it e::cellent." 

Lady Macbeth (i. 5) tells her husband : 

" look like the innocent flower, 
But be the serpent under't." 



l^ 



Juliet (" Romeo and Juliet," iii. 2) speaks of: 

" Serpent heart, hid with a flowering face." 



^ " Shakespeare and the Emblem Writers," 1870, p. 341. 



PROVERBS. 



447 



"A staff is quickly found to beat a dog." Other versions 
of this proverb are : " It is easy to find a stick to beat a 
dog;" "It is easy to find a stone to throw at a dog/" 
So, in " 2 Henry VI." (iii. i), Gloster says: 

" I shall not want false witness to condemn me, 
Nor store of treasons to augment my guilt ; 
The ancient proverb will be well eflfected, — 
A staff is quickly found to beat a dog." 

"A wise man may Hve anywhere." In "Richard II." 
(i. 3), John of Gaunt says : 

" All places that the eye of heaven visits, 
Are to a wise man ports and happy havens." 

" A woman conceals what she does not know." Hence 
Hotspur says to his wife, in " i Henry IV." (ii. 3): 

Constant you are, 
But yet a woman : and for secrecy, 
No lady closer; for I well believe 
Thou wilt not utter what thou dost not know, — 
And so far will I trust thee, gentle Kate." 

"All men arc not alike" ("Much Ado About Nothing," 
-iii. 5).^ 

" All's Well that Ends Well." 

"As lean as a rake." So in "Coriolanus" (i. i), one of 

the citizens says : " Let us revenge this with our pikes, ere 

we become rakes." So Spenser, in his "Fairy Queen" (bk. 

ii. can. 1 1) : 

" His body leane and meagre as a rake." 

This proverb is found in Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" 

(i. 289) : 

" Al so lene was his hors as is a rake." 

" As thin as a whipping-post " is another proverb of the 
same kind. 

' See Kelly's " Proverbs of All Nations," 1870, p. 157. 
" Halliwell-Phillipps's " Handbook Index to Shakespeare," p. 390, 
under Proverbs. 



448 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

" As mad as a March hare " (" The Two Noble Kinsmen," 
iii. 5). We may compare the expression " hare-brained :" 
" I Henry IV." (v. 2). 

"As sound as a bell." So in " Much Ado about Nothing" 
(iii. 2), Don Pedro says of Benedick : " He hath a heart as 
sound as a bell." 

"As the bell clinketh, so the fool thinketh." This prov- 
erb is indirectly alluded to in "Much Ado About Nothing" 
(iii. 2), in the previous passage, where Don Pedro says of 
Benedick that " He hath a heart as sound as a bell, and his 
tongue is the clapper ; for what his heart thinks, his tongue 
speaks." 

Another form of the same proverb is : " As the fool 
thinks, the bell tinks." ' 

"As true as steel." This popular adage is quoted in 
"Troilus and Cressida " (iii. 2): 

" As true as steel, as plantage to the moon." 

We may also compare the proverb : " As true as the dial 
to the sun." 

"At hand, quoth pick-purse " (" i Henry IV.," ii. i). This 
proverbial saying arose, says Malone, from the pickpurse 
always seizing the prey nearest him. 

"Ay, tell me that and unyoke" (" Hamlet," v. i). This 
was a common adage for giving over or ceasing to do a 
thing ; a metaphor derived from the unyoking of oxen at 
the end of their labor. 

" Baccare, quoth Mortimer to his sow." With this Mr. 
Halliwell-Phillipps compares Gremio's words in the " Tam- 
ing of the Shrew " (ii. i); 

" Saving your tale, Petruchio, I pray, 
Let us, that are poor petitioners, speak too : 
Baccare ! you are marvellous forward." 

Mr. Dyce (" Glossary," p. 23) says the word signifies " go 
back," and cites one of John Heywood's epigrams upon it: 



' See Kelly's " Proverbs of All Nations," p. 91. 



PROVERBS. 

" Backare, quoth Mortimer to his sow ; 
Went that sowe backe at that bidding, trow you." 



449 



" Barnes are blessings " (" All's Well that Ends Well," 

i-3). 

" Base is the slave that pays " (" Henry V.," ii. i).' 

" Bastards are born lucky." This proverb is alluded to in 

" King John " (i. i), by the Bastard, who says : 

" Brother, adieu ; good fortune come to thee I 
For thou wast got i' the way of honesty." 

Philip wishes his brother good fortune, because Robert was 
not a bastard. 

" Beggars mounted run their horses to death."" Quoted 
by York in " 3 Henry VI." (i. 4). We may also compare 
the proverb : " Set a beggar on horseback, he'll ride to the 
devil." 

" Begone when the sport is at the best." Mr. Halliwell- 
Phillipps quotes Benvolio's words in " Romeo and Juliet " 

(i.5): 

" Away, be gone ; the sport is at the best." 

To the same effect are Romeo's words (i. 4) : 

" The game was ne'er so fair, and I am done." 

" Be off while your shoes are good." This popular phrase, 
still in use, seems alluded to by Katharina in " Taming of 
the Shrew " (iii. 2), who says to Petruchio : 

" You may be jogging whiles your boots are green." 

" Better a witty fool, than a foolish wit." Quoted by the 
clown in " Twelfth Night " (i. 5). 

" Better fed than taught." This old saying may be 
alluded to in "All's Well that Ends Well" (ii. 2) by the 
clown, " I will show myself highly fed and lowly taught ;" 
and again (ii. 4) by Parolles : 

'• A good knave, i' faith, and well fed." 

" Blessing of your heart, you brew good ale." Quoted by 

' Halliwell-Phillipps's " Handbook Index to Shakespeare," p. 391. 
* See Bohn's " Handbook of Proverbs," p. 326. 

29 



450 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



Launce as a proverb in the "Two Gentlemen of Verona" 
(iii. I). 

" Blush like a black dog." This saying is referred to in 
" Titus Andronicus " (v. i) : 

" I Goth. What, canst thou say all this, and never blush? 
Aaron. Ay, like a black dog, as the saying is." 

"Bought and sold" (" Troilus and Cressida," ii. i). A 
proverbial phrase applied to any one entrapped or made a 
victim by treachery or mismanagement. It is found again 
in the " Comedy of Errors" (iii. i) ; in " King John " (v. 4); 
and in "Richard III." (v. 3). 

" Bring your hand to the buttery-bar, and let it drink " 
(" Twelfth Night," i. 3). Mr. Dyce quotes the following ex- 
planation of this passage, although he does not answer for 
its correctness : " This is a proverbial phrase among forward 
abigails, to ask at once for a kiss and a present. Sir An- 
drew's slowness of comprehension in this particular gave 
her a just suspicion, at once, of his frigidity and avarice." 
The buttery-bar means the place in palaces and in great 
houses whence provisions were dispensed ; and it is still to 
be seen in most of our colleges. 

" Brag's a good dog, but Hold-fast is a better." This 
proverb is alluded to in " Henry V." (ii. 3), by Pistol; 

" Hold-fast is the only dog, my duck." ■ 

" Bush natural, more hair than wit." Ray's Proverbs. 
So in " Two Gentlemen of Verona " (iii. i), it is said, " She 
hath more hair than wit." 

" By chance but not by truth " ^ (" King John," i. i). 

" Care will kill a cat ; yet there's no living without it." 
So in " Much Ado About Nothing" (v. i), Claudio says to 
Don Pedro : " What though care killed a cat, thou hast 
mettle enough in thee to kill care." 

" Come cut and long-tail " (" Merry Wives of Windsor," 

' See Bohn's " Handbook of Proverbs," p. 333 ; Kelly's " Proverbs 
of all Nations," 1870, p. 173. 

* Halliwell-Phillipps's " Handbook Index to Shakespeare," p. 391. 



PROVERBS. 



451 



(iii. 4), This proverb means, " Let any come that may, good 
or bad;" and was, no doubt, says Staunton, originally applied 
to dogs or horses." 

" Comparisons are odious." So, in " Much Ado About 
Nothing " (iii. 5), Dogberry tells Verges : " Comparisons are 
odorous." 

" Confess and be hanged." This well-known proverb is 
probably alluded to in the " Merchant of Venice " (iii. 2) : 

" Bassatiw. Promise me life, and I'll confess the truth. 
Portia. Well then, confess, and live." 

We may also refer to what Othello says (iv. i): ''To con- 
fess, and be hanged for his labour; first, to be hanged, and 
then to confess. I tremble at it." 

In " Timon of Athens" (i. 2), Apemantus says: " Ho, ho, 
confess'd it ! hang'd it, have you not?" 

" Cry him, and have him." So Rosalind says, in " As You 
Like It " (i. 3), " If I could cry ' hem ' and have him," 

" Cry you mercy, I took you for a joint-stool " (" King 
Lear," iii. 6). It is given by Ray in his "Proverbs" (1768); 
see also " Taming of the Shrew " (ii. i). 

" Cucullus non facit monachum." So in " Henry VIII." 
(iii. i), Queen Katherinc says: 

"All hoods 'make not monks."' 

Chaucer thus alludes to this proverb : 

" Habite ne maketh monk ne feere ; 
But a clean life and devotion 
Maketh gode men of religion." 

"Dead as a door-nail." So, in "2 Henry VI." (iv. 10), 
Cade says to Iden : "I have eat no meat these five days; 
yet, come thou and thy five men, and if I do not leave you 
all as dead as a door-nail, I pray God I may never eat grass 
more." 

We may compare the term, " dead as a herring," which 
Caius uses in the "Merry Wives of Windsor" (ii. 3), " By 
gar, de herring is no dead, so as I vill kill him." 

" Death will have his day " (" Richard II.," iii. 2), 



n 



452 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

" Delays are dangerous." In " i Henry VI." (iii. 2), 
Reignier says: 

" Defer no time, delays have dangerous ends." 

" Diluculo surgere," etc. ("Twelfth Night," ii. 3). 

"Dogs must eat." This, with several other proverbs, is 
quoted by Agrippa in " Coriolanus " (i. i). 

" Dun's the mouse " (" Romeo and Juliet," i. 4). This was 
a proverbial saying, of which no satisfactory explanation has 
yet been given. Nares thinks it was " frequently employed 
with no other intent than that of quibbling on the word 
doncy Ray has, "as dun as a mouse." Mercutio says: 
"Tut, dun's the mouse, the constable's own word." 

" Empty vessels give the greatest sound." Quoted in 
" Henry V." (iv. 4). 

" Every dog hath his day, and every man his hour." This 
old adage seems alluded to by Hamlet (v. i) :' 

" The cat will mew, and dog will have his day." 

" Every man at forty is either a fool or a physician." * 
This popular proverb is probably referred to in " Merry 
Wives of Windsor" (iii. 4), by Mistress Quickly, who tells 
Fenton how she had recommended him as a suitor for Mr. 
Page's daughter instead of Doctor Caius: " This is my doing, 
now : ' Nay,' said I, ' will you cast away your child on a fool, 
and a physician ? look on Master Fenton :' — this is my do- 
ing." 

" Familiarit}^ breeds contempt." So, in the " Merry Wives 
of Windsor " (i. i), Slender says : " I hope, upon familiarity 
will grow more contempt." 

" Fast bind, fast find." In " Merchant of Venice " (ii. 5), 

Shylock says : 

" Well, Jessica, go in : 
Perhaps I will return immediately : 



' Bohn's " Handbook of Proverbs," p. 86. 

'^ Ray gives another form : " Every man is either a fool or a physi- 
cian after thirty years of age f see Bohn's " Handbook of Proverbs," 
1857, p. 27. 



PROVERBS. 453 

Do as I bid you ; shut doors after you ; 

Fast bind, fast find ; 

A proverb never stale in thrifty mind." 

"Finis coronat opus." A translation of this Latin proverb 
is given by Helena in " All's Well that Ends Well " (iv. 4) : 

" Still the fine's the crown.'' 

In " 2 Henry VI." (v. 2), also, Clifford's expiring words are: 
" La fin couronne les oeuvres." We still have the expression 
to crown, in the sense of to finisJi or make perfect. Mr. 
Douce ' remarks that " coronidem imponcre is a metaphor well 
known to the ancients, and supposed to have originated 
from the practice of finishing buildings by placing a crown 
at the top as an ornament ; and for this reason the words 
croiun, top, and Jiead are become synonymous in most lan- 
guages. There is reason for believing that the ancients 
placed a crescent at the beginning, and a crown, or some 
ornament that resembled it, at the end of their books." In 
" Troilus and Cressida " (iv. 5), Hector says : 

" The fall of every Phrygian stone will cost 
A drop of Grecian blood : the end crowns all ; 
And that old common arbitrator, Time, 
Will one day end it." 

Prince Henry ('' 2 Henry IV.," ii. 2), in reply to Poins, gives 
another turn to the proverb: "By this hand, thou think'st 
me as far in the devil's book as thou and Falstaff, for obdu- 
racy and persistency: let the end try the man.'"'' 

" Fly pride, says the peacock." This is quoted by Dro- 
mio of Syracuse, in " The Comedy of Errors " (iv. 3).^ 

" Friends may meet, but mountains never greet." This 
1^ is ironically alluded to in " As You Like It " (iii. 2), by Celia : 
" It is a hard matter for friends to meet ; but mountains 
may be removed with earthquakes, and so encounter." 

' " Illustrations of Shakespeare," p. 199. 

''See Green's "Shakespeare and the Emblem Writers," 1870, pp. 
319. 323- 
^ Halliwell-Phillipps's " Handbook Index to Shakespeare," p. 391. 



454 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

" Give the devil his due." In " Henry V." (iii. 7) it is 
quoted by the Duke of Orleans. 

" God sends fools fortune." It is to this version of the 
Latin adage, " F'ortuna favet fatuis " ("Fortune favors 
fools"), that Touchstone alludes in his reply to Jaques, in 

"As You Like It" (ii. 7): 

" ' No, sir,' quoth he', 
' Call me not fool till heaven hath sent me fortune.'" 

Under different forms, the same proverb is found on the 
Continent. The Spanish say, " The mother of God appears 
to fools ;" and the German one is this, " Fortune and wom- 
en are fond of fools."' 

" God sends not corn for the rich only." This is quoted 
by Marcius in " Coriolanus " (i. i). 

" Good goose, do not bite." This proverb is used in 
" Romeo and Juliet " (ii. 4) : 

" Mercutio. I will bite thee by the ear for that jest. 
Romeo. Nay, good goose, bite not." 

" Good liquor will make a cat speak." So, in the " Tem- 
pest " (ii. 2), Stephano says : " Come on your ways : open 
your mouth; here is that which will give language to you, 
cat ; open your mouth." 

" Good wine needs no bush." This old proverb, which is 
quoted by Shakespeare in " As You Like It " (v. 4, " Epi- 
logue") — " If it be true that good wine needs no bush, 'tis 
true that a good play needs no epilogue " — refers to the 
custom of hanging up a bunch of twigs, or a wisp of hay, at 
a roadside inn, as a sign that drink may be had within. 
This practice, " which still lingers in the cider-making coun- 
ties of the west of England, and prevails more generally in 
France, is derived from the Romans, among whom a bunch 
of ivy was used as the sign of a wine-shop." They were 
also in the habit of saying, " Vendible wine needs no ivy 
hung up." The Spanish have a proverb, " Good wine needs 
no crier."* 

' Kelly's " Proverbs of All Nations," 1872, p. 52, 
* Ibid., 1870, pp. 175, 176. 



PROVERBS. 



455 



" Greatest clerks not the wisest men." Mr. Halliwell- 
Phillipps, in his " Handbook Index to Shakespeare " (p. 391), 
quotes the following passage in " Twelfth Night " (iv. 2), 
where Maria tells the clown to personate Sir Topas, the 
curate : " I am not tall enough to become the function well, 
nor lean enough to be thought a good student ; but to be 
said an honest man and a good housekeeper goes as fairly 
as to say a careful man and a great scholar." 

" Happy man be his dole " (" Taming of the Shrew," i, 
I ; " I Henry IV./' ii. 2). Ray has it," Happy man, happy 
dole ;" or, " Happy man by his dole." 
A^ " Happy the bride on whom the sun shines." Mr. Halli- 
well-Phillipps, in his "Handbook Index to Shakespeare" 
(p. 392), quotes, as an illustration of this popular proverb, 
the following passage in " Twelfth Night " (iv. 3), where 
Olivia and Sebastian, having made " a contract of eternaj 
bond of love," the former says: 

" and heavens so shine. 
That they may fairly note this act of mine I" 

" Happy the child whose father went to the devil."' So, 
in " 3 Henry VI." (ii. 2), King Henry asks, interrogatively: 

" And happy ahvays was it for that son, 
Whose father, for his hoarding, went to hell ?" 

The Portuguese say, " Alas for the son whose father goes 
to heaven." 

" Hares pull dead lions by the beard." In " King John " 
(ii. i), the Bastard says to Austria: 

" You are the hare of whom the proverb goes. 
Whose valour plucks dead lions by the beard." 

" Have is have, however men do catch." Quoted by the 
Bastard in "King John" (i. i). 

" Heaven's above all." In " Richard II." (iii. 3) York tells 
Bolingbroke : 

• See Bohn's "Handbook of Proverbs," p. 100; Kelly's "Proverbs 

of All Nations," p. 187. 



456 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

" Take not, good cousin, further than you should, 
Lest you mistake : the heavens are o'er our heads." 

So, too, in " Othello " (ii. 3), Cassio says : " Heaven's above 
all." ' 

" He is a poor cook who cannot lick his own fingers." 
Under a variety of forms, this proverb is found in different 
countries. The Italians say, " He who manages other peo- 
ple's wealth does not go supperless to bed." The Dutch, 
too, say, " All officers are greasy," that is, something sticks 
to them.^ In "^Romeo and Juliet" (iv. 2) the saying is thus 
alluded to : 

" Capiilet. Sirrah, go hire me tvventy cunning cooks. 

2 Servant. You shall have none ill, sir; for I'll try if they can lick 
their fingers. 

Captilet. How canst thou try them so ? 

2 Servant. Marry, sir, 'tis an ill cook that cannot lick his own fin- 
gers : therefore he that cannot lick his fingers goes not with me." 

" He's mad, that trusts in the tameness of a wolf, a horse's 
health, a boy's love, or a whore's oath " ( " King Lear," 
iii. 6).^ 

" Heroum filii noxae." It is a common notion that a fa- 
ther above the common rate of men has usually a son below 
it. Hence, in " The Tempest " (i. 2), Shakespeare probably 

alludes to this Latin proverb : 

" My trust, 
Like a good parent, did beget of him 
A falsehood, in its contrary as great 
As my trust was." 

" He knows not a hawk from a handsaw." Hamlet says 
(ii. 2) : " When the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a 
handsaw." 

'* He may hang himself in his own garters." So, Falstaff 
(" I Henry IV." ii. 2) says: " Go, hang thyself in thine own 
heir-apparent garters." 

' Halliwell-Phillipps's " Handbook Index to Shakespeare,'' p. 392. 

- See Kelly's " Proverbs of All Nations," 1870, pp. 196, 197. 

'■' Halliwell-Phillipps's " Handbook Index to Shakespeare," p. 392. 



rUOVERBS. 



457 



" He that is born to be hanged will never be drowned." 
In "The Tempest" (i. i), Gonzalo says of the Boatswain: 
" I have great comfort from this fellow : methinks he hath 
no drowning mark upon him ; his complexion is perfect 
gallows. Stand fast, good Fate, to his hanging ! make the 
rope of his destiny our cable, for our own doth little advan- 
tage ! If he be not born to be hanged, our case is miserable." 
The Italians say, " He that is to die by the gallows may 
dance on the river." 

" He that dies pays all debts" ("The Tempest," iii. 2). 

" He who eats with the devil hath need of a long spoon." 
This is referred to by Stephano, in " The Tempest " (ii. 2) : 
" This is a devil, and no monster: I will leave him ; I have 
no long spoon." Again, in the "Comedy of Errors" (iv. 3), 
Dromio of Syracuse says : " He must have a long spoon that 
must cat with the devil." 

The old adage, which tells how 

" He that will not when he may, 
When he will he shall have nay," 

is quoted in " Antony and Cleopatra " (ii. 7) by Menas : 

"Who seeks, and will not take, when once 'tis offer'd. 
Shall never find it more." 

" Hold hook and line " (" 2 Henry IV.," ii. 4). This, 
says Dyce, is a sort of cant proverbial expression, which 
sometimes occurs in our early writers (" Glossary," p. 210). 

" Hold, or cut bow-strings"' ("A Midsummer -Night's 
Uream," i. 2). 

" Honest as the skin between his brows " (" Much Ado 
About Nothing," iii. 5).' 

" Hunger will break through stone-walls." This is quoted 
by Marcius in " Coriolanus " (i. i), who, in reply to Agrippa's 
question, " What says the other troop ?" replies : 

" They are dissolved : hang 'em ! 
They said they were an-hungry; sigh'd forth proverbs, — 
That hunger broke stone-walls," etc. 

' See page 394. * " Handbook Index to Shakespeare,"' p. 392. 



458 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 




According to an old Suffolk proverb,' " Hunger will break 
through stone-walls, or anything, except Suffolk cheese." 

" I scorn that with my heels " (" Much Ado About Noth- 
ing," iii. 4). A not uncommon proverbial expression. It is 
again referred to, in the "Merchant of Venice" (ii. 2), by 
Launcelot : "do not run; scorn running with thy heels." 
Dyce thinks it is alluded to in " Venus and Adonis :" 

" Beating his kind embracements with her heels." 

" If you are wise, keep yourself warm." This proverb is 
probably alluded to in the "Taming of the Shrew" (ii. i): 

" PetrucJiio. Am I not wise ? 
Katharina. Yes ; keep you warm." 

So, in " Much Ado About Nothing " (i. i) : " that if he have 
wit enough to keep himself warm." 

" I fear no colours " ("Twelfth Night," i. 5). 

" Ill-gotten goods never prosper." This proverb is re- 
ferred to by King Henry (" 3 Henry VI.," ii. 2) : 

" Clifford, tell me, didst thou never hear 
That things ill got had ever bad success.?" 

" Illotis manibus tractare sacra." Falstaff, in " i Henry 
IV." (iii. 3), says: " Rob me the exchequer the first thing 
thou dost, and do it with unwashed hands too." 

" 111 will never said well." This is quoted by Duke of 
Orleans in " Henry V." (iii. 7). 

" In at the window, or else o'er the hatch " (" King John," 
i. i). Applied to illegitimate children. Staunton has this 
note : " Woe worth the time that ever a gave suck to a child 
that came in at the window !" (" The Family of Love," 1608). 
So, also, in " The Witches of Lancashire," by Heywood and 
Broome, 1634: "It appears you came in at the window." 
" I would not have you think I scorn my grannam's cat to 
leap over the hatch." 

" It is a foul bird which defiles its own nest." This seems 

' Bohn's " Handbook of Proverbs," 1S57, p. 409. 



I 



PROVERBS. 45Q 

alluded to in " As You Like It " (iv. i), where Cclia says to 
Rosalind : " You have simply misused our sex in your love- 
prate : we must have your doublet and hose plucked over 
your head, and show the Avorld what the bird hath done to 
her own nest." 

" It is a poor dog that is not worth the whistling." So 
Goneril, in "King Lear" (iv. 2): "I have been worth the 
whistle." 

" It is a wise child that knows its own father." In the 
" Merchant of Venice" (ii. 2), Launcelot has the converse of 
this : " It is a wise father that knows his own child." 

" It is an ill wind that blows nobody good." So, in " 3 
Henry VI." (ii. 5), we read : 

" 111 blows the wind that profits nobody." 

And, in " 2 Henry IV." (v. 3), when Falstaff asks Pistol 
" What wind blew you hither?" the latter replies : " Not the 
ill wind which blows no man to good." 

" It is easy to steal a shive from a cut loaf." In " Titus 
Andronicus " (ii, i), Demetrius refers to this proverb. Ray 
has, " 'Tis safe taking a shive out of a cut loaf." 

" It's a dear collop that's cut out of my own flesh." Mr. 
Halliwell-Phillipps thinks there may be possibly an allusion 
to this proverb in " i Henry VI." (v. 4), where the Shepherd 
says of La Pucelle : 

" God knows, thou art a collop of my flesh." 

" I will make a shaft or a bolt of it." In the '* Merry 
Wives of Windsor" (iii. 4) this proverb is used by Slender.' 
Ray gives "to make a bolt or a shaft of a thing." This is 
equivalent to, " I will either make a good or a bad thing of 
it ; I will take the risk." 

" It is like a barber's chair " ("All's Well that Ends Well," 
ii. 2). 

' A shaft is an arrow for the longbow, a bolt is for the crossbow. 
Kelly's " Proverbs of All Nations," p. 155. 



460 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



The following passage, in " A Midsummer-Night's Dream " 

(iii. 2): 

"Jack shall have Jill ; 
Nought shall go ill ; 
The man shall have his mare again, 
And all shall be well," 

refers to the popular proverb of olden times, says Staunton, 
signifjang " all ended happily." So, too, Biron says, in 
"Love's Labour's Lost " (v. 2) : 

" Our wooing doth not end like an old play ; 
Jack hath not Jill." 

It occurs in Skelton's poem " Magnyfycence " (Dyce, ed. 1. 
p. 234): "Jack shall have Gyl ;" and in Heywood's "Dia- 
logue" (Sig. F. 3, 1598): 

" Come, chat at hame, all is well. Jack shall have Gill." 

" Kindness will creep where it cannot go." Thus, in the 
" Two Gentlemen of Verona " (i v. 2), Proteus tells Thurio how 

" love 
Will creep in service where it cannot go." 

There is a Scotch proverb, " Kindness will creep whar it 
mauna gang." 

" Let the world slide " (" Taming of the Shrew," Induc- 
tion, sc. i.). 
t^ " Let them laugh that win." Othello says (iv. i) : 

" So, so, so, so : — they laugh that win." 

On the other hand, the French say, " Marchand qui perd ne 
peut rire." 

" Like will to like, as the devil said to the collier." With 
this we may compare the following passage in " Twelfth 
Night " (iii. 4) : " What, man ! 'tis not for gravity to play at 
cherry-pit with Satan: hang him, foul collier!" — collier 
having been, in Shakespeare's day, a term of the highest 
reproach. 

" Losers have leave to talk." Titus Andronicus (iii. i) i 
says : 



PROVERBS. 461 

" Then give me leave, for losers will have leave 
To ease their stomachs with their bitter tongues." 

" Maids say nay, and take." So Julia, in the " Two Gen- 
tlemen of Verona " (i. 2), says : 

" Since maids, in modesty, say ' No ' to that 
Which they would have the profiferer construe 'Ay.'" 

In " The Passionate Pilgrim " we read : 

" Have you not heard it said full oft, 
A woman's nay doth stand for nought }" 

'' Make hay while the sun shines." King Edward, in " 3 
Henry VI." (iv. 8), alludes to this proverb: 

"The sun shines hot ; and, if we use delay. 
Cold, biting winter mars our hop'd-for hay." 

The above proverb is peculiar to England, and, as Trench 
remarks, could have its birth only under such variable skies 
as ours. 

" Many talk of Robin Hood that never shot in his bow." 
So, in " 2 Henry IV." (iii. 2), Justice Shallow, says Falstaff, 
" talks as familiarly of John o' Gaunt as if he had been sworn 
brother to him ; and I'll be sworn a' never saw him but once 
in the Tilt-yard, — and then he burst his head, for crowding 
among the marshal's men." 

" Marriage and hanging go by destiny." This proverb is 
the popular creed respecting marriage, and, under a variety 
of forms, is found in different countries. Thus, in " Mer- 
chant of Venice " (ii. 9), Nerissa says : 

" The ancient saying is no heresj', — 
Hanging and wiving goes by destiny." 

Again, in " All's Well that Ends Well " (i. 3), the Clown says: 

" For I the ballad will repeat. 

Which men full true shall find ; 
Your marriage comes by destiny, 
Your cuckoo sings by kind." 

' " But now consider the old proverbe to be true, yt saieth that mar- 
riage is destinie." — Hall's "Chronicles." 



462 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



We may compare the well-known proverb, " Marriages are 
made in heaven," and the French version, " Les mariages 
sont ecrits dans le ciel." 

" Marriage as bad as hanging." In " Twelfth Night " (i. 5), 
the Clown says : " Many a good hanging prevents a bad 
marriage." 

" Marry trap " (" Merry Wives of Windsor," i. i). This, 
says Nares, " is apparently a kind of proverbial exclamation, 
as much as to say, ' By Mary, you are caught.' " 

" Meat was made for mouths." Quoted in " Coriolanus" 

(i. I)- I 

" Misfortunes seldom come alone." This proverb is beau- 
tifully alluded to by the King in " Hamlet" (iv. 5) : 

"When sorrows come, they come not single spies, 
But in battalions." 

The French say:' " Malheur ne vient jamais seul." 

" More hair than wit " (" Two Gentlemen of Verona," 
iii. 2). A well-known old English proverb. 

" Mortuo leoni et lepores insultant." This proverb is al- 
luded to by the Bastard in " King John " (ii. i), who says 
to the Archduke of Austria : 

" You are the hare of whom the proverb goes, 
Whose valour plucks dead lions by the beard." 

" Much water goes by the mill the miller knows not of." 
This adage is quoted in "Titus Andronicus" (ii. i), by 

Demetrius : 

" more water glideth by the mill 
Than wots the miller of." 

" My cake is dough " (" Taming of the Shrew," v. i). An 
obsolete proverb, repeated on the loss of hope or expecta- 
tion : the allusion being to the old-fashioned way of baking 
cakes at the embers, when it may have been occasionally 
the case for a cake to be burned on one side and dough 
on the other. In a former scene (i. i) Gremio says: "our 

' See Bohn's " Handbook of Proverbs," p. 116. 



PROVERBS. 463 

cake's dough on both sides." Staunton quotes from " The 
Case is Altered," 1609: 

" Steward, your cake is dough, as well as mine." 

"Murder will out." So, in the "Merchant of Venice" 
(ii. 2), Launcelot says : " Murder cannot be hid long, — a 
man's son may ; but, in the end, truth will out." 

"Near or far off, well won is still well shot" ("King 
John," i. i). 

"Needs must when the devil drives." In "All's Well 
that Ends Well" (i. 3), the Clown tells the Countess : " I am 
driven on by the flesh ; and he must needs go, that the devil 
drives." 

" Neither fish, nor flesh, nor good red herring." ' Falstaff 
says of the Hostess in " i Henry IV." (iii. 3): " Why, she's 
neither fish nor flesh ; a man knows not where to have her." 

"One nail drives out another." In " Romeo and Juliet" 
(i. 2), Benvolio says : 

" Tut, man, one fire burns out another's burning. 
One pain is lessen'd by another's anguish ; 

Turn giddy, and be holp by backward turning; 

One desperate grief cures with another's languish : 

Take thou some new infection to thy eye, 

And the rank poison of the old will die." 

The allusion, of course, is to homoeopathy. The Italians 
say, " Poison quells poison." 

" Old men are twice children ;" or, as they say in Scot- 
land, " Auld men are twice bairns." We may compare the 
Greek Aic -u'lBeg 01 yipovncj. The proverb occurs in " Ham- 
let" (ii. 2): "An old man is twice a child." 

" Out of God's blessing into the warm sun." So Kent 
says in " King Lear" (ii. 2) : 

" Good king, that must approve the common saw, — 
Thou out of heav'en's benediction com'st 
To the warm sun.'' 

* See Bohn's " Handbook of Proverbs," pp. 160, 251. 



464 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



" Patience perforce is a medicine for a mad dog." This 
proverb is probably alluded to by Tybalt in " Romeo and 
Juliet" (i. 5): 

" Patience perforce with wilful choler meeting, 
Makes my flesh tremble in their dififerent greeting." 

And again, in " Richard III." (i. i): 

" Gloster. Meantime, have patience. 
Clarence. I must perforce : farewell." 

" Pitch and Pay " (" Henry V.," ii. 3). This is a proverbial 
expression equivalent to " Pay down at once."' It probably 
originated from pitching goods in a market, and paying im- 
mediately for their standing. Tusser, in his " Description 
of Norwich," calls it : 

" A city trim, 
Where strangers well may seem to dwell, 
That pitch and pay, or keep their day." 

" Pitchers have ears." Baptista quotes this proverb in 
the *' Taming of the Shrew " (iv. 4) : 

" Pitchers have ears, and I have many servants." 

According to another old proverb : " Small pitchers have 
great ears." 

" Poor and proud ! fy, fy." Olivia, in " Twelfth Night " 
(iii. i), says : 

" O world, how apt the poor are to be proud !" 

" Praise in departing " ("The Tempest," iii. 3). The mean- 
ing is : " Do not praise your entertainment too soon, lest you 
should have reason to retract your commendation." Staun- 
ton quotes from "The Paradise of Dainty Devises," 1596: 

" A good beginning oft we see, but seldome standing at one stay. 
For few do like the meane degree, then praise at parting some men 
say." 

" Pray God, my girdle break "' (" i Henry IV.," iii. 3), 

' See Dyce's " Glossary," p. 323. 

° Halliwell-Phillipps's " Handbook Index to Shakespeare," p. 393. 



PROVERBS. 



465 



"Put your finger in the fire and say it was your fortune." 
An excellent illustration of this proverb is given by Edmund 
in "King Lear" (i. 2): "This is the excellent foppery of 
the world, that, when we are sick in fortune, we make guilty 
of our disasters, the sun, the moon, and the stars: as if we 
were villains on necessity ; fools, by heavenly compulsion ; 
knaves, thieves, and treachers, by spherical predominance ; 
drunkards, liars, and adulterers, by an enforced obedience of 
planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine 
thrusting on : an admirable evasion," etc. 

" Respice finem, respice furem." It has been suggested 
that Shakespeare (" Comedy of Errors," iv. 4) may have met 
with these words in a popular pamphlet of his time, by 
George Buchanan, entitled " Chamaeleon Redivivus ; or, Na- 
thaniel's Character Reversed " — a satire against the Laird 
of Lidingstone, 1570, which concludes with the following 
words, " Respice finem, respice furem." 

" Seldom comes the better." In " Richard III." (ii. 3), 
one of the citizens says : 

" 111 news, by'r lady ; seldom comes the better : 
I fear, I fear, 'twill prove a troublous world " 

— a proverbial saying of great antiquity. Mr. Douce' cites 
an account of its origin from a MS. collection of stories in 
Latin, compiled about the time of Henry III. 

" Service is no inheritance." So, in " All's Well that Ends 
Well" (i. 3), the Clown says : " Service is no heritage." 

" Sit thee down, sorrow " (" Love's Labour's Lost," i. i). 

" Sit at the stern." A proverbial phrase meaning to have 
the management of public affairs. So, in " i Henry VI." 
(i. i), Winchester says: 

" The king from Eltham I intend to steal, 
And sit at chiefest stern of public weal." 

" She has the mends in her own hands." This proverbial 
phrase is of frequent occurrence in our old writers, and prob- 
ably signifies, " It is her own fault ;" or, " The remedy lies 

' " Illustrations of Shakespeare," p. 333. 
30 



466 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

with herself." It is used by Pandarus in " Troilus and 
Cressida" (i. i). Burton, in his "Anatomy of Melancholy," 
writes : " And if men will be jealous in such cases, the mends 
is in their own hands, they must thank themselves." 

" Small herbs have grace, great weeds do grow apace " 
("Richard III.," ii. 4). 

"So wise so young, do ne'er live long" (" Richard III.," 
iii. I).' 

" So like you, 'tis the worse." This is quoted as an old 
proverb by Paulina in the " Winter's Tale" (ii. 3). 

" Something about, a little from the right " (" King John," 

" Sowed cockle, reap no corn " (" Love's Labour's Lost," 

iv. 3)- 

" Speak by the card " (" Hamlet," v. i). A merchant's 
expression, equivalent to "be as precise as a map or book." 
The card is the document in writing containing the agree- 
ment made between a merchant and the captain of a vessel. 
Sometimes the owner binds himself, ship, tackle, and furni- 
ture, for due performance, and the captain is bound to de- 
clare the cargo committed to him in good condition. Hence, 
"to speak by the card" is to speak according to the inden- 
tures or written instructions. 

" Still swine eat all the draff" (" Merry Wives of Wind- 
sor," iv. 2). Ray gives : " The still sow eats up all the 
draught." 

" Still waters run deep." So in " 2 Henry VI." (iii. i), 
Suffolk says : 

" Smooth runs the water where the brook is deep." 

" Strike sail." A proverbial phrase to acknowledge one's 
self beaten. In " 3 Henry VI." (iii. 3), it occurs: 

" now Margaret 
Must strike her sail and learn awhile to serve, 
Where kings command." 

' See page 332. 



I 



PROVERBS. 



467 



When a ship, in fight, or on meeting another ship, lets down 
her topsails at least half-mast high, she is said to strike, that 
is, to submit or pay respect to the other.' 
' " Strike while the iron is hot." Poins probably alludes to 
this proverb in "2 Henry IV." (ii. 4): "My lord, he will 
drive you out of your revenge, and turn all to a merriment, 
if you take not the heat." 

Again, in " King Lear " (i. i), Goneril adds : " We must do 
something, and i' the heat." 

" Take all, pay all " (" Merry Wives of V'indsor," ii. 2). 
Ray gives another version of this proverb : " Take all, and 
pay the baker." 

" Tell the truth and shame the devil." In " i Henry IV." 
(iii. i), Hotspur tells Glendower: 

" I can teach thee, coz, to shame the devil 
By telling truth : tell truth, and shame the devil." 

" That was laid on with a trowel."^ This proverb, which 
is quoted by Ray, is used by Celia in " As You Like It " 
(i. 2). Thus we say, when any one bespatters another with 
gross flattery, that he lays it on with a trowel. 

" The cat loves fish, but she's loath to wet her feet." It is 
to this proverb that Lady Macbeth alludes when she up- 
braids her husband for his irresolution {" Macbeth," i. 7): 

" Letting ' I dare not' wait upon ' I would,' 
Like the poor cat i' the adage." 

There are various forms of this proverb. Thus, according 
to the rhyme : 

" Fain would the cat fish eat. 
But she's loath to wet her feet." 

The French version is " Le chat aime Ic poisson mais il 
n'aime pas a meuiller la patte " — so that it would seem 
Shakespeare borrowed from the French. 

' Brewer's " Dictionary of Phrase and Fable," p. 860. 
' Ray's " Proverbs" (Bohn's Edition), 1857, p. 76. 



468 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

" The devil rides on a fiddlestick " (" i Henry IV.," ii. 4). 

" The galled jade will wince." So Hamlet says (iii. 2), 
" let the galled jade wince, our withers are unwrung." 

"The grace o' God is gear enough." This is the Scotch 
form of the proverb which Launcelot Gobbo speaks of as 
being well parted between Bassanio and Shylock, in the 
" Merchant of Venice " (ii. 2) : " The old proverb is very well 
parted between my master Shylock and you, sir ; you have 
the grace of God, sir, and he hath enough." 

" The Mayor of Northampton opens oysters with his 
dagger." This proverb is alluded to by Pistol in " Merry 
Wives of Windsor" (ii. 2), when he says : 

" Why, then the world's mine oyster. 
Which I with sword will open." 

Northampton being some eighty miles from the sea, oysters 
were so stale before they reached the town (before railroads, 
or even coaches, were known), that the " Mayor would be 
loath to bring them near his nose." 
y^ " The more haste the worse speed." In " Romeo and 
Juliet" (ii. 6), Friar Laurence says : 



" These violent delights have violent ends 
And in their triumph die; like fire and powder, 
Which, as they kiss, consume : the sweetest honey 
Is loathsome in his own deliciousncss. 
And in the taste confounds the appetite : 

'therefore, love moderately ; long love doth so ; 
Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow." 



\ 



The proverb thus alluded to seems to be derived from the 
Latin adage, " Festinatio tarda est." It defeats its own pur- 
pose by the blunders and imperfect work it occasions.' 
Hence the French say: "He that goes too hastily along 
often stumbles on a fair road." 

" There is flattery in friendship " — used by the Constable 
of France in " Henry V." (iii. 7) ; the usual form of this 
proverb being: "There is falsehood in friendship." 

' Kelly's " Proverbs of All Nations," p. 80. 



PROVERBS. 469 

" There was but one way " (" Henry V.," ii. 3). " This," 
says Dyce, " is a kind of proverbial expression for death." 
(" Glossary," p. 494.) 

"^ " The weakest goes to the wall." This is quoted by 
Gregory in " Romeo and Juliet" (i. i), whereupon Sampson 
adds: "Women, being the weaker vessels, are ever thrust 
to the wall : therefore, I will push Montague's men from the 
wall, and thrust his maids to the wall." 

" There went but a pair of shears between them " (" Meas- 
ure for Measure," i. 2). That is, "We are both of the same 
piece." 

" The world goes on wheels." This proverbial expression 
occurs in "Antony and Cleopatra" (ii. 7); and Taylor, the 
Water-Poet, has made it the subject of one of his pamphlets : 
" The worlde runnes on wheeles, or, oddes betwixt carts and 
coaches." 

" Three women and a goose make a market." This prov- 
erb is alluded to in "Love's Labour's Lost" (iii. i): 

" thus came your argument in ; 
Then the boy's fat renvoy, the goose that you bought ; 
And he ended the market." 

The following lines in " i Henry VL" (i. 6), 

" Thy promises are Hke Adonis' gardens 
That one day bloom'd, and fruitful were the next,'' 

allude to the Adonis horti, which were nothing but portable 
earthen pots, with some lettuce or fennel growing in them. 
On his yearly festival every woman carried one of them in 
honor of Adonis, because Venus had once laid him in a let- 
tuce bed. The next day they were thrown away. The 
proverb seems to have been used always in a bad sense, for 
things which make a fair show for a few days and then 
wither away. The Dauphin is here made to apply it as an 
encomium. There is a good account of it in Erasmus's 
" Adagia ;" but the idea may have been taken from the 
" Fairy Queen," bk. iii. cant. 6, st. 42 (Singer's " Shake- 
speare," 1875, vol. vi. p. 32). 

"To clip the anvil of my sword." "This expression, in 



470 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



'Coriolanus' (iv. 5) is very difficult to be explained," says 
Mr. Green, " unless we regard it as a proverb, denoting the 
breaking of the weapon and the laying aside of enmity. 
Aufidius makes use of it in his welcome to the banished 

Coriolanus." 

" here I clip 
The anvil of my sword ; and do contest 
As hotly and as nobly with thy love, 
As ever in ambitious strength I did 
Contend against thy valour." 

" To have a month's mind to a thing." Ray's " Proverbs." 
So, in the " Two Gentlemen of Verona " (i. 2), Julia says : 

" I see you have a month's mind to them."^ 

" 'Tis merry in hall when beards wag all."" This is quoted 
by Silence in " 2 Henry IV." (v. 3) : 

*' Be merry, be merry, my wife has all ; 
For women are shrews, both short and tall ; 
'Tis merry in hall when beards wag all, 
And welcome merry shrove-tide. 
Be merry, be merry." 

"To have one in the wind." This is one of Camden's 
proverbial sentences. In "All's Well that Ends Well" 
(iii. 6), Bertram says : 

" I spoke with her but once, 
And found her wondrous cold ; but I sent to her, 
By this same coxcomb that we have i' the wind, 
Tokens and letters which she did re-send." 

" To hold a candle to the devil " — that is, " to aid or coun- 
tenance that which is wrong.'' Thus, in the " Merchant of 
Venice" (ii. 6), Jessica says: 

" What, must I hold a candle to my shames ?" 

— the allusion being to the practice of the Roman Catholics 
who burn candles before the image of a favorite saint, carry 
them in funeral processions, and place them on their altars. 

' See page 385. * See Bohn's " Handbook of Proverbs,'' p. 115. 



PROVERBS. 



471 



" To the dark house " (" All's Well that Ends^Vell," ii. 3). 
A house which is the seat of gloom and discontent. 

"Truth should be silent." Enobarbus, in "Antony and 
Cleopatra" (ii. 2), says: " That truth should be silent I had 
almost forgot." 

" To take mine ease in mine inn." A proverbial phrase 
used by Falstafif in " i Henry IV." (iii. 3), implying, says Mr. 
Drake, " a degree of comfort which has always been the 
peculiar attribute of an English house of public entertain- 
ment." ' 

"Twice away says stay" ("Twelfth Night," v\ i). Ma- 
lone thinks this proverb is alluded to by the Clown : " con- 
clusions to be as kisses, if your four negatives make your 
two affirmatives, why, then, the worse for my friends and the 
better for my foes ;" and quotes Marlowe's " Last Dominion," 
where the Queen says to the Moor: 

" Come, let's kisse. 
Moor. Away, away. 

Queen. No, no, sayes I, and twice away sayes stay." 

"Trust not a horse's heel." In "King Lear" (iii. 6) the 
Fool says, " he's mad that trusts a horse's health." Malone 
would read " heels." 

"Two may keep counsel, putting one away." So Aaron, 
in " Titus Andronicus " (iv. 2), says : 

"Two may keep counsel, when the third's away." 

" Ungirt, unblest." Falstaff alludes to the old adage, in 
" I Henry IV." (iii. 3). " I pray God my girdle break." 
Malone quotes from an ancient ballad : 

" Ungirt, unblest, the proverbe sayes ; 

And they to prove it right, 
Have got a fashion now adayes, 

That's odious to the sight ; 
Like Frenchmen, all on points they stand. 

No girdles now they wear." 

' "Shakespeare and his Times," vol. i. p. 216. 



472 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



" Walls have ears." So, in " A Midsummer-Night's Dream " 
(v. i), Thisbe is made to say : 

" O wall, full often hast thou heard my moans,. 
For parting my fair Pyramus and me." 

" Wedding and ill-wintering tame both man and beast." 
Thus, in "Taming of the Shrew" (iv. i), Grumio says: 
" Winter tames man, woman, and beast ; for it hath tamed 
my old master, and my new mistress, and myself." We may 
also compare the Spanish adage : " You will marry and grow 
tame." 

"We steal as in a castle" (" i Henry IV.," ii. i). This, 
says Steevens, was once a proverbial phrase. 

" What can't be cured must be endured." With this 
popular adage may be compared the following : " Past cure 
is still past care," in " Love's Labour's Lost " (v. 2). So in 
" Richard IL" (ii. 3), the Duke of York says : 

"Things past redress are now with me past care." 

Again, in " Macbeth " (iii. 2) Lady Macbeth says : 

" Things without all remedy 
Should be without regard : what's done is done." 

" What's mine is yours, and what is yours is mine " 
(" Measure for Measure," v. i). 

" When things come to the worst they'll mend." The 
truth of this popular adage is thus exemplified by Pandulph 

in " King John " (iii. 4) : 

" Before the curing of a strong disease, 
Even in the instant of repair and health, 
The fit is strongest ; evils that take leave, 
On their departure most of all show evil." 

Of course it is equivalent to the proverb, " When the 
night's darkest the day's nearest." 

"When? can you tell?" ("Comedy of Errors," iii. i). 
This proverbial query, often met with in old writers, and 
perhaps alluded to just before in this scene, when Dromio 
of Syracuse says: "Right, sir; I'll tell you when, an you'll 



PROVERBS. 473 

tell me wherefore;" occurs again in " i Henry IV." (ii. i): 
" Ay, when ? canst tell ?" 

" When two men ride the same horse one must ride be- 
hind." So in " Much Ado About Nothing " (iii. 5) Dogberry 
says : " An two men ride of a horse, one must ride behind." ' 
With this may be compared the Spanish adage, " He who 
rides behind does not saddle when he will." 

" While the grass grows, the steed starves." This is al- 
luded to by Hamlet (iii. 2): "Ay, sir, but 'while the grass 
grows,' the proverb is something musty." See Dyce's 
" Glossary," p. 499. 

" Who dares not stir by day must walk by night " (" King 
John," i. 1). 

"Who goes to Westminster for a wife, to St. Paul's for a 
man, and to Smithfield for a horse, may meet with a queanc, 
a knave, and a jade." This proverb, often quoted by old 
writers, is alluded to in " 2 Henry IV." (i. 2) : 

" Fahtaff. Where's Bardolph ? 

Page. He's gone into Smithfield to buy your worship a horse. 

Falstaff. I bought him in Paul's, and he'll buy me a horse in Smith- 
field : an I could get me but a wife in the stews, I were manned, horsed, 
and wived.'' 

" Wit, whither wilt ?" This was a proverbial expression 
not unfrequent in Shakespeare's day. It is used by Orlando 
in "As You Like It" (iv. i): "A man that had a wife with 
such a wit, he might say — ' Wit, whither Avilt ?' " 

" Will you take eggs for money?" This was a proverbial 
phrase, quoted by Leontes in the " Winter's Tale " (i. 2), for 
putting up with an affront, or being cajoled or imposed upon. 

"Words are but wind, but blows unkind." In "Comedy 
of Errors" (iii. i), Dromio of Ephesus uses the first part of 
this popular adage. 

" Worth a Jew's eye." Launcelot, in the " Merchant of 
Venice" (ii. 5), says: 

" There will come a Christian by, 
Will be worth a Jewess' eye." 

' See Kelly's " Proverbs of All Nations,'' p. 49. 



474 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



According to tradition, the proverb arose from the custoni 
of torturing Jews to extort money from them. It is simply, 
however, a corruption of the ItaHan gidia (a jewel). 

" You'll never be burned for a witch." This proverb, 
which was applied to a silly person, is probably referred to 
in " Antony and Cleopatra " (i. 2) by Charmian, when he says 
to the soothsayer : 



I 



" Out, fool ; I forgive thee for a witch." 



1 



"Young ravens must have food" ("Merry Wives of 
Windsor," i. 3).' Ray has " Small birds must have meat." 

' " Handbook Index to Shakespeare," p. 395. 



CHAPTER XX. 

THE HUMAN BODY. 

It would be difficult to enumerate the manifold forms 
of superstition which have, in most countries, in the course 
of past centuries, clustered round the human body. Many 
of these, too, may still be found scattered, here and there, 
throughout our own country, one of the most deep-rooted 
being palmistry, several allusions to which are made by 
Shakespeare. 

According to a popular belief current in years past, a 
trembling of the body was supposed to be an indication of 
demoniacal possession. Thus, in the " Comedy of Errors " 
(iv. 4), the Courtezan says of Antipholus of Ephesus : 

" Mark how he trembles in his ecstasy !" 

and Pinch adds : 

" I charge thee, Satan, hous'd within this man. 
To yield possession to my holy prayers, 
And to thy state of darkness hie thee straight ; 
I conjure thee by all the saints in heaven !" 

In " The Tempest " (ii. 2), Caliban says to Stephano, 
"Thou dost me yet but little hurt ; thou wilt anon, I know 
it by thy trembling." 

It was formerly supposed that our bodies consisted of the 
four elements — fire, air, earth, and water, and that all diseases 
arose from derangement in the due proportion of these 
elements. Thus, in Antony's eulogium on Brutus, in " Julius 
Caesar" (v. 5), this theory is alluded to: 

" His life was gentle, and the elements 
So mix'd in him, that Nature might stand up, 
And say to all the world, ' This was a man !' " 



476 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

In " Twelfth Night" (ii. 3) it is also noticed : 

" Sir Toby. Do not our lives consist of the four elements ? 

Sir Andrew. 'Faith, so they say ; but, I think, it rather consists of 
eating and drinking. 

Sir Toby. Thou art a scholar ; let us therefore eat and drink. 
Marian, I say ! — a stoop of wine !" 

In "Antony and Cleopatra" (v. 2), Shakespeare makes 
the latter say : 

" I am fire, and air, my other elements 
I give to baser life." 

This theory is the subject, too, of Sonnets xliv. and xlv., 
and is set forth at large in its connection with physic in 
Sir Philip Sidney's " Arcadia :" 

" O elements, by whose (men say) contention. 
Our bodies be in living power maintained, 
Was this man's death the fruit of your dissension ? 
O physic's power, which (some say) hath restrained 
Approach of, death, alas, thou keepest meagerly, 
When once one is for Atropos distrained. 
Great be physicians' brags, but aide is beggarly 
When rooted moisture fails, or groweth drie ; 
They leave oflf all, and say, death comes too eagerly. 
They are but words therefore that men doe buy 
Of any, since God Esculapius ceased.'' 

This notion was substantially adopted by Galen, and em- 
braced by the physicians of the olden times.' 

Blood. In old phraseology this word was popularly used 
for disposition or temperament. In " Timon of Athens" 

(iv. 2), Flavins says : 

" Strange, unusual blood. 
When man's worst sin is, he does too much good !" 

In the opening passage of" Cymbeline" it occurs in the same 

sense : 

" You do not meet a man but frowns : our bloods 
No more obey the heavens, than our courtiers 
Still seem as does the king," 

' See Bucknill's " Medical Knowledge of Shakespeare," p. 120. 



THE HUMAN BODY. 



477 



the meaning evidently being that " our dispositions no 
longer obey the influences of heaven ; they are courtiers, 
and still seem to resemble the disposition the king is in." 

Again, in '' Much Ado About Nothing" (ii. 3) : " wisdom 
and blood combating in so tender a body, we have ten proofs 
to one, that blood hath the victory." 

Once more, in " King Lear" (iv. 2), the Duke of Albany 
says to Goneril : 

" Were't my fitness 
To let these hands obey my blood, 
They are apt enough to dislocate and tear 
Thy flesh and bones." 

Again, the phrase "to be in blood " was a term of the 
chase, meaning, to be in good condition, to be vigorous. In 
" I Henry VI." (iv. 2), Talbot exclaims: 

" If we be English deer, be, then, in blood ; 
Not rascal-like, to fall down with a pinch " 

— the expression being put in opposition to " rascal," which 
was the term for the deer when lean and out of condition. 
In "Love's Labour's Lost" (iv. 2), Holofernes says: "The 
deer was, as you know, sanguis, — in blood." 

The notion that the blood may be thickened by emotional 
influences is mentioned by Polixenes in the " Winter's Tale" 
(i. 2), where he speaks of " thoughts that would thick my 
blood." In King John's temptation of Hubert to murder 
Arthur (iii. 3), it is thus referred to : 

" Or if that surly spirit, melancholy, 
Had bak'd thy blood and made it heavy, thick, 
Which else runs tickling up and down the veins." 

Red blood was considered a traditionary sign of courage. 
Hence, in the " IVIerchant of Venice" (ii. i), the Prince of 
Morocco, when addressing himself to Portia, and urging his 
claims for her hand, says : 

" Bring me the fairest creature northward born, 
Where Phoebus' fire scarce thaws the icicles, 



478 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

And let us make incision for your love,' 

To prove whose blood is reddest, his or mine." 

Again, in the same play, cowards are said to " have livers 
as white as milk," and an effeminate man is termed a 
" milk-sop." Macbeth, too (v. 3), calls one of his frighted 
soldiers a " lily-liver'd boy." And in "King Lear" (ii. 2), 
the Earl of Kent makes use of the same phrase. In illus- 
tration of this notion Mr. Douce' cjuotes from Bartholomew 
Glantville, who says : " Reed clothes have been layed upon 
deed men in remembrance of theyr hardynes and boldnes, 
whyle they were in theyr bloudde." 

The absence of blood in the liver as the supposed property 
of a coward, originated, says Dr. Bucknill,'' in the old theory 
of the circulation of the blood, which explains Sir Toby's 
remarks on his dupe, in " Twelfth Night " (iii. 2) : " For An- 
drew, if he were opened, and you find so much blood in his 
liver as will clog the foot of a flea, I'll eat the rest of the 
anatomy." 

We may quote here a notion referred to in " Lucrece" 
(1744-50), that, ever since the sad death of Lucrece, corrupt- 
ed blood has watery particles : 

" About the mourning and congealed face 
Of that black blood a watery rigol goes, 
Which seems to weep upon the tainted place : 
And ever since, as pitying Lucrece' woes. 
Corrupted blood some watery token shows ; 
And blood untainted still doth red abide, 
Blushing at that which is so putrefied." 

Brain. By old anatomists the brain was divided into 

' Mr. Singer, in a note on this passage, says, "It was customary, in 
the East, for lovers to testify the violence of their passion by cutting 
themselves in the sight of their mistresses ; and the fashion seems to 
have been adopted here as a mark of gallantry in Shakespeare's time, 
when young men frequently stabbed their arms with daggers, and, 
mingling the blood with wine, drank it ofif to the healths of their mis- 
tresses." — Vol. ii. p. 417. 

'•' " Illustrations of Shakspeare," 1839, p. 156. 

^ " Medical Knowledge of Shakespeare," p. 124. 



THE HUMAN BODY. 



479 



three ventricles, in the hindcrmost of which they p-laced the 
memory. That this division was not unknown to Shake- 
speare is apparent from "Love's Labour's Lost" (iv. 2), 
where Holofernes says : " A foolish extravagant spirit, full 
of forms, figures, shapes, objects, ideas, apprehensions, mo- 
tions, revolutions: these are begot in the ventricle of mem- 
ory." Again, Lady Macbeth (i. 7), speaking of Duncan's 
two chamberlains, says : 

" Will I with wine and wassail so convince, 
That memory, the warder of the brain, 
Shall be a fume, and the receipt of reason 
A limbeck only." 

The " third ventricle is the cerebellum, by which the brain 
is connected with the spinal marrow and the rest of the 
body ; the memory is posted in the cerebellum, like a warder 
or sentinel, to warn the reason against attack. Thus, when 
the memory is converted by intoxication into a mere fume,' 
then it fills the brain itself — the receipt or receptacle of rea- 
son, which thus becomes like an alembic, or cap of a still."* 

A popular nickname, in former times, for the skull, was 
"brain-pan;" to which Cade, in "2 Henry VL" (iv. 10) 
refers: "many a time, but for a sallet, my brain-pan had 
been cleft with a brown bill," The phrase " to beat out 
the brains " is used by Shakespeare metaphorically in the 
sense of defeat or destroy; just as nowadays we popularly 
speak of knocking a scheme on the head. In " Measure for 
Measure " (v. i), the Duke, addressing Isabella, tells her: 

" O most kind maid, 
It was the swift celerity of his death, 
Which I did think with slower foot came on, 
That brain'd my purpose." 

The expression "to bear a brain," which is used by the 
Nurse in " Romeo and Juliet " (i. 3), 

' Cf. " Tempest," v. i : 

"the ignorant fumes that mantle 
Their clearer reason." 

^ Clark and Wright's " Notes to Macbeth," 1877, p. loi. 



48o FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

" Nay, I do bear a brain," 

denoted "much mental capacity either of attention, ingenu- 
ity, or remembrance." ' Thus, in Marston's " Dutch Cour- 
tezan " (1605), we read : 

" My silly husband, alas ! knows nothing of it, 'tis 
I that must beare a braine for all." 

The notion of the brain as the seat of the soul is men- 
tioned by Prince Henry, who, referring to King John (v. 7), 

says : 

" his pure brain, 
Which some suppose the soul's frail dwelling-house. 
Doth, by the idle comments that it makes, 
Foretell the ending of mortality." 

Ear. According to a well-known superstition, much cred- 
ited in days gone by, and still extensively believed, a tingling 
of the right ear is considered lucky, being supposed to de- 
note that a friend is speaking well of one, whereas a tingling 
of the left is said to imply the opposite. This notion, how- 
ever, varies in different localities, as in some places it is the 
tingling of the left ear which denotes the friend, and the 
tingling of the right ear the enemy. In " Much Ado About 
Nothing " (iii. i), Beatrice asks Ursula and Hero, who had 
been talking of her: 

" What fire is in mine ears .-*" 

the reference, no doubt, being to this popular fancy. Sir 
Thomas Browne^ ascribes the idea to the belief in guardian 
angels, who touch the right or left ear according as the con- 
versation is favorable or not to the person. 

In Shakespeare's day it was customary for young gallants 
to wear a long lock of hair dangling by the ear, known as a 
" love-lock." Hence, in " Much Ado About Nothing " (iii. 3), 
the Watch identifies one of his delinquents : " I know him ; 
a' wears a lock."' 

' Singer's " Shakespeare," vol.viii. p. 123. 

2 "Vulgar Errors,"book V. chap. 23(Bohn's edition, 1852, vol. ii. p. 82). 

^ Prynne attacked the fashion in his " Unloveliness of Love-locks." 



THE HUMAN BODY. 



481 



Again, further on (v. i), Dogberry gives another allusion to 
this practice : " He wears a key in his ear, and a lock hang- 
ing by it." 

An expression of endearment current in years gone by 
was " to bite the ear." In " Romeo and Juliet " (ii. 4), Mer- 

cutio says : 

" I will bite thee by the ear for that jest," 

a passage which is explained in Nares (" Glossary," vol. i. p. 
81) by the following one from Ben Jonson's "Alchemist" 
(ii-3): 

" Mmnmon. Th' hast witch'd me, rogue ; take, go. 
Face. Your jack, and all, sir. 

JMammon. Slave, I could bite thine ear. . . . Away, thou dost not 
care for me !" 

Gifford, in his notes on Jonson's " Works " (vol. ii. p. 184), says 
the odd mode of expressing pleasure by biting the ear seems 
" to be taken from the practice of animals, who, in a playful 
mood, bite each other's ears." 

While speaking of the ear, it may be noted that the so- 
called want of ear for music has been regarded as a sign of 
an austere disposition. Thus Caesar says of Cassius ("Julius 
Caesar," i. 2): 

" He hears no music : 
Seldom he smiles." 

There is, too, the well-known passage in the " Merchant of 
Venice " (v. i) : 

"The man that hath no music in himself, 
Nor is not mov'd with concord of sweet sounds. 
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils." 

According to the Italian proverb : " Whom God loves not, 
that man loves not music." ' 

Elbow. According to a popular belief, the itching of the 
elbow denoted an approaching change of some kind or 
other." Thus, in " i Henry IV." (v. i), the king speaks of 

' See Douce's " Illustrations of Shakespeare," pp. 165, 166. 
* Ibid. p. 273. 

31 



^82 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

" Fickle changelings, and poor discontents, 
Which gape, and rub the elbow, at the news 
Of hurlyburly innovation." 

With this idea we may compare similar ones connected with 
other parts of the body. Thus, in " Macbeth " (iv. i), one of 
the witches exclaims : 

" By the pricking of my thumbs. 
Something wicked this way comes." 

Again, in " Troilus and Cressida" (ii. i), Ajax says: "My 
fingers itch," ' and an itching palm was said to be an indica- 
tion that the person would shortly receive money. Hence, 
it denoted a hand ready to receive bribes. Thus, in " Julius 
Caesar " (iv. 3), Brutus says to Cassius : 

" Let me tell you, Cassius, you yourself 
Are much condemn'd to have an itching palm ; 
To sell and mart your offices for gold 
To undeservers." 

So, in " Merry Wives of Windsor " (ii. 3), Shallow says : " If 
I see a sword out, my finger itches to make one." 

Again, in "Othello" (iv. 3), poor Desdemona says to 

Emilia : 

" Mine eyes do itch ; 
Doth that bode weeping?" 

Grose alludes to this superstition, and says: "When the 
right eye itches, the party affected will shortly cry ; if the 
left, they will laugh." The itching of the eye, as an omen, is 
spoken of by Theocritus, who says : 

" My right eye itches now, and I will see my love." 

Eyes. A good deal of curious folk-lore has, at one time 
or another, clustered round the eye ; and the well-known 
superstition known as the " evil eye " has already been de- 
scribed in the chapter on Birth and Baptism. Blueness 
above the eye was, in days gone by, considered a sign of 
love, and as such is alluded to by Rosalind in " As You Like 

^ See " Romeo and Juliet" (iii. 5), where Capulet says, " My fingers 
itch," denoting anxiety. 



THE HUMAN BODY. 



483 



It " (iii. 2), where she enumerates the marks of love to Or- 
lando : " A lean cheek, which you have not ; a blue eye, and 
sunken, which you have not." 

The term " baby in the eye " was sportively applied by 
our forefathers to the miniature reflection of himself which 
a person may see in the pupil of another's eye. In " Timon 
of Athens " (i. 2), one of the lords says : 

"Joy had the like conception in our eyes. 
And, at that instant, like a babe sprung up," 

an allusion probably being made to this whimsical notion. 
It is often referred to by old writers, as, for instance, by 
Drayton, in his " Ideas :" 

" But O, see, see ! we need enquire no further, 
Upon your lips the scarlet drops are found, 
And, in your eye, the boy that did the murder." • 

We may compare the expression, " to look babies in the 
eyes," a common amusement of lovers in days gone by. In 
Beaumont and Fletcher's " Loyal Subject " (iii. 2), Theodore 

asks : 

"Can ye look babies, sisters, 
In the young gallants' eyes, and twirl their band-strings ?" 

And once more, to quote from Massinger's " Renegado " 
(ii. 4), where Donusa says : 

" When a young lady wrings you by the hand, thus. 
Or with an amorous touch presses your foot ; 
Looks babies in your eyes, plays with your locks," etc. 

Another old term for the eyes was " crystal," which is used 
by Pistol to his wife, Mrs. Quickly, in " Henry V." (ii. 3) : 

" Therefore, caveto be thy counsellor. 
Go, clear thy crystals ;" 

that is, dry thine eyes. 

In " Romeo and Juliet " (i. 2), the phrase is employed by 
Benvolio : 

" Tut I you saw her fair, none else being by, 
Herself pois'd with herself in either eye : 

' See Nares's " Glossary," vol. i. p. 44. 



484 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

But in that crystal scales let there be weigh'd 
Your lady's love against some other maid." 

It also occurs in Beaumont and Fletcher's " Double Mar- 
riage " (v. 3), where Juliana exclaims : 

" Sleep you, sweet glasses ! 
An everlasting slumber crown those crystals." 

The expression "wall-eyed " denotes, says Dyce (" Glos- 
sary," p. 486)," eyes with a white or pale-gray iris — glaring- 
eyed." It is used by Lucius in "Titus Andronicus " (v. i): 

" Say, wall-ey'd slave, whither wouldst thou convey 
This growing image of thy fiend-like face ?" 

In "King John" (iv. 3), Salisbury speaks of "wall-eyed 
wrath." 

Brockett, in his "Glossary of North Country Words," says: 
" In those parts of the north with which I am best ac- 
quainted, persons are said to be tvall-cycd when the white 
of the eye is very large and to one side ; on the borders ' sic 
folks ' are considered lucky. The term is also occasionally 
applied to horses with similar eyes, though its wider general 
acceptation seems to be when the iris of the eye is white, or 
of a very pale color. A wall-cycd horse sees perfectly well." 

Face. A common expression " to play the hypocrite," or 
feign, was " to face." So, in " i Henry VI." (v. 3), Suffolk 

declares how : 

" Fair Margaret knows 
That Suffolk doth not flatter, face, or feign." 

Hence the name of one of the characters in Ben Jonson's 
" Alchemist." So, in the " Taming of the Shrew " (ii. i) : 

" Yet I have faced it with a card of ten." 

The phrase, also, " to face me down," implied insisting 
upon anything in opposition. So, in the " Comedy of 
Errors " (iii. i), Antipholus of Ephesus says : 

" But here's a villain that would face me down 
He met me on the mart." 

Feet. Stumbling has from the earliest period been con- 



THE HUMAN BODY. 



485 



sidered ominous.' Thus, Cicero mentions it among the 
superstitions of his day ; and numerous instances of this 
unkicky act have been handed down from bygone times. 
We are told by Ovid how Myrrha, on her way to Cinyra's 
chamber, stumbled thrice, but was not deterred by the omen 
from an unnatural and fatal crime ; and Tibullus (lib. I., 
eleg. iii. 20), refers to it : 

" O ! quoties ingressus iter, mihi tristia dixi, 

Offensum in porta signa dedisse pedem." 

This superstition is alluded to by Shakespeare, who, in 
" 3 Henry VI." (iv. 7), makes Gloster say : 

" For many men that stumble at the threshold 
Are well foretold that danger lurks within." 

In "Richard III." (iii. 4), Hastings relates:^ 

"Three times to-day my foot-cloth horse did stumble, 
And started when he look'd upon the Tower, 
As loath to bear me to the slaughter-house." 

In the same way, stumbling at a grave has been regarded 
as equally unlucky ; and in " Romeo and Juliet " (v. 3), Friar 

Laurence says : 

" how oft to-night 
Have my old feet stumbled at graves." 

Hair. From time immemorial there has been a strong 
antipathy to red hair, which originated, according to some 
antiquarians, in a tradition that Judas had hair of this color. 
One reason, it may be, why the dislike to it arose, was that 
this color was considered ugly and unfashionable, and on 

' See Brand's " Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. iii. p. 249 ; Jones's " Credulities 
Past and Present," pp. 529-531 ; " Notes and Queries," 5th series, vol. 
viii. p. 201. 

' The following is from Holinshed, who copies Sir Thomas More : 
" In riding toward the Tower the same morning in which he (Hastings) 
was beheaded his horse twice or thrice stumbled with him, almost to 
the falling; which thing, albeit each man wot well daily happeneth to 
them to whome no such mischance is toward ; yet hath it beene of an 
olde rite and custome observed as a token oftentimes notablie forego- 
ing some great misfortune."' 



486 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

this account a person with red hair would soon be regarded 
with contempt. It has been conjectured, too, that the odium 
took its rise from the aversion to the red-haired Danes. In 
"As You Like It" (iii. 4), Rosahnd, when speaking of 
Orlando, refers to this notion:' "His very hair is of the 
dissembling colour," whereupon Ceila replies: "Something 
browner than Judas's." 

Yellow hair, too, was in years gone by regarded with ill- 
favor, and esteemed a deformity. In ancient pictures and 
tapestries both Cain and Judas are represented with yellow 
beards, in allusion to which Simple, in the " Merry Wives of 
Windsor " (i. 4), when interrogated, says of his master : " He 
hath but a little wee face, with a little yellow beard— a Cain- 
coloured beard." ^ 

In speaking of beards, it may be noted that formerly they 
gave rise to various customs. Thus, in Shakespeare's day, 
dyeing beards was a fashionable custom, and so Bottom, in 
"A Midsummer-Night's Dream" (i. 2), is perplexed as to 
what beard he should wear when acting before the duke. 
He says: "I will discharge it in either your straw-colour 
beard, your orange-tawny beard, your purple-in-grain beard, 
or your French-crown-colour beard, your perfect yellow." ^ 

To mutilate a beard in any way was considered an irrep- 
arable outrage, a practice to which Hamlet refers (ii. 2) : 

" Who calls me villain ? breaks my pate across ? 
Plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face ?" 

And in " King Lear" (iii. 7), Gloster exclaims: 

• " By the kind gods, 'tis most ignobly done 

To pluck me by the beard." 

Stroking the beard before a person spoke was preparatory 
to favor. Hence in " Troilus and Cressida " (i. 3), Ulysses, 



' See Nares's " Glossary," vol. i. p. 127 ; Dyce's "Glossary," pp. 61, 230. 
^ The quartos of 1602 read "a kane-coloured beard." 
^ See Jaques's Description of the Seven Ages in " As You Like It," 
(ii.6). 



THE HUMAN BODY. 487 

when describing how Achilles asks Patroclus to imitate cer- 
tain of their chiefs, represents him as saying: 

" ' Now play me Nestor ; hem, and stroke thy beard, 
As he, being drest to some oration.' " 

Again, the phrase " to beard " meant to oppose face to 
face in a hostile manner. Thus, in " i Henry IV." (iv. i), 
Douglas declares: 

" No man so potent breathes upon the ground, 
But I will beard him.*' 

And in " i Henry VI." (i. 3), the Bishop of Winchester says 
to Gloster : 

" Do what thou dar'st ; I'll beard thee to thy face." 

It seems also to have been customary to swear by the 
beard, an allusion to which is made by Touchstone in " As 
You Like It " (i. 2) : " stroke your chins, and swear by your 
beards that I am a knave." 

We may also compare what Nestor says in "Troilus and 
Cressida (iv. 5) : 

" By this white beard, I'd fight with thee to-morrow." 

Our ancestors paid great attention to the shape of their 
beards, certain cuts being appropriated to certain professions 
and ranks. In "Henry V." (iii. 6), Gower speaks of "a 
beard of the general's cut." As Mr. Staunton remarks, 
" Not the least odd among the fantastic fashions of our fore- 
fathers was the custom of distinguishing certain professions 
and classes by the cut of the beard ; thus we hear, tn/cr alia, 
of the bishop's beard, the judge's beard, the soldier's beard, 
the citizen's beard, and even the clown's beard." Randlc 
Holme tells us, "The broad or cathedral beard [is] so-called 
because bishops or gown-men of the church anciently did 
wear such beards." By the military man, the cut adopted 
was known as the stiletto or spade. The beard of the citi- 
zen was usually worn round, as ]\Irs. Quickly describes it in 



488 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



''Merry Wives of Windsor" (i. 4), "like a glover's paring- 
knife." The clown's beard was left bushy or untrimmed. 
Malone quotes from an old ballad entitled " Le Prince d' 
Amour," 1660 : 

" Next the clown doth out-rush 
With the beard of the bush." 

According to an old superstition, much hair on the head 
has been supposed to indicate an absence of intellect, a no- 
tion referred to by Antipholus of Syracuse, in the " Comedy 
of Errors" (ii. 2): "there's many a man hath more hair 
than wit." In the "Two Gentlemen of Verona " (iii. i), 
the same proverbial sentence is mentioned by Speed. Ma- 
lone quotes the following lines upon Suckling's " Aglaura," 
as an illustration of this saying:' 

"This great voluminous pamphlet may be said 
To be like one that hath more hair than head ; 
More excrement than body : trees which sprout 
With broadest leaves have still the smallest fruit." 

Steevens gives an example from " Florio :" " A tisty- 
tosty wag-feather, more haire than wit." 

Excessive fear has been said to cause the hair to stand on 
end ; an instance of which Shakespeare records in " Ham- 
let " (iii. 4), in that celebrated passage where the Queen, 
being at a loss to understand her son's strange appearance 
during his conversation with the Ghost, which is invisible 
to her, says : 

" And, as the sleeping soldiers in the alarm, 
Your bedded hair, like life in excrements, 
Starts up, and stands on end." 

A further instance occurs in " The Tempest" (i. 2), where 
Ariel, describing the shipwreck, graphically relates how 

" All, but mariners, 
Plunged in the foaming brine, and quit the vessel, 
Then all a-fire with me : the king's son, Ferdinand, 

^ "Parnassus Biceps," 1656. 



THE HUMAN BODY. 489 

With hair up-staring — then like reeds, not hair — 
Was the first man that leap'd." 

Again, Macbeth says (i. 3) : 

" why do I yield to that suggestion 
Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair?" 

And further on he says (v. 5) : 

" The time has been, my senses would have cool'd 
To hear a night-shriek ; and my fell of hair 
Would at a dismal treatise rouse, and stir 
As life were in't." 

In " 2 Henry VI." (iii. 2) it is referred to by Suffolk as a 
sign of madness : 

" My hair be fix'd on end, as one distract." 

And, once more, in " Richard III." (i. 3), Hastings de- 
clares : 

" My hair doth stand on end to hear her curses." 

Another popular notion mentioned by Shakespeare is, 
that sudden fright or great sorrow will cause the hair to 
turn white. In " i Henry IV." (ii. 4), Falstaff, in his speech 
to Prince Henry, tells him: "thy father's beard is turned 
white with the news." 

Among the many instances recorded to establish the truth 
of this idea, it is said that the hair and beard of the Duke 
of Brunswick whitened in twenty-four hours upon his hear- 
ing that his father had been mortally wounded in the battle 
of Auerstadt. Marie Antoinette, the unfortunate queen of 
Louis XVI., found her hair suddenly changed by her trou- 
bles ; and a similar change happened to Charles I., when he 
attempted to escape from Carisbrooke Castle. Mr. Timbs, 
in his "Doctors and Patients" (1876, p. 201), says that 
"chemists have diccovered that hair contains an oil, a mu- 
cous substance, iron, oxide of manganese, phosphate and 
carbonate of iron, flint, and a large proportion of sulphur. 
White hair contains also phosphate of magnesia, and its oil 
is nearly colourless. When hair becomes suddcnK- white 



490 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



from terror, it is probably owing to the sulphur absorbing 
the oil, as in the operation of whitening woollen cloths." 

Hair was formerly used metaphorically for the color, 
complexion, or nature of a thing. In " i Henry IV." (iv. i), 
Worcester says : 



" I would your father had been here, 
The quality and hair of our attempt 
Brooks no division." 



41 

sed:S 



In Beaumont and Fletcher's " Nice Valour" it is so u 

" A lady of my hair cannot want pitying." 

Hands. Various superstitions have, at different times, 
clustered round the hand. Thus, in palmistry, a moist one 
is said to denote an amorous constitution. In " Othello " 
(iii. 4) we have the following allusion to this popular notion : 

" Othello. Give me your hand. This hand is moist, my lady. 
Desde7nona. It yet has felt no age, nor known no sorrow. 
Othello. This argues fruitfulness, and liberal heart." 

Again, in " Antony and Cleopatra " (i. 2), Iras says : " There's 
a palm presages chastity;" whereupon Charmian adds : " If 
an oily palm be not a fruitful prognostication, I cannot 
scratch mine ear." And, in the " Comedy of Errors " (iii. 2), 
Dromio of Syracuse speaks of barrenness as " hard in the 
palm of the hand." 

A dry hand, however, has been supposed to denote age 
and debility. In " 2 Henry IV." (i. 2) the Lord Chief Jus- 
tice enumerates this among the characteristics of such a con- 
stitution.' 

In the " Merchant of Venice" (ii. 2), Launcelot, referring 
to the language of palmistry, calls the hand "the table,'' 
meaning thereby the whole collection of lines on the skin 
within the hand : " Well, if any man in Italy have a fairer 
table, which doth offer to swear upon a book, I shall have 
eood fortune." He then alludes to one of the lines in the 
hand, known as the " line of life :" " Go to, here's a simple 
line of life." 

' Sec Brand's " Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. i''- P- I79- 



ii 



THE HUMAN BODY. 40 1 

In the "Two Noble Kinsmen " (iii. 5) palmistry is further- 
mentioned : 

" Gaoler's Daughter. Give me your hand. 
Gerrold. Why ? 

Gaoler's DattgJitcr. I can tell your fortune." 

It was once supposed that little worms were bred in the 
fingers of idle servants. To this notion Mercutio refers in 
"Romeo and Juliet " (i. 4), where, in his description of Queen 
Mab, he says : 

" Her waggoner, a small grey-coated gnat, 
Not half so big as a round little worm 
Prick'd from the lazy finger of a maid." 

This notion is alluded to by John Banister, a famous sur- 
geon in Shakespeare's day, in his " Compendious Chyrurge- 
rie " (1585, p. 465) : " We commonly call them worms, which 
many women, sitting in the sunshine, can cunningly picke 
out with needles, and are most common in the handes." 

A popular term formerly in use for the nails on the ten 
fingers was the "ten commandments," which, says Nares,' 
" doubtless led to the swearing by them, as by the real com- 
mandments." Thus, in " 2 Henry VI." (i. 3), the Duchess 
of Gloster says to the queen : 

" Could I come near your beauty with my nails 
I'd set my ten commandments in your face." 

In the same way the fingers Avere also called the " ten 
bones," as a little further on in the same play, where Peter 
swears " by these ten bones." 

The phrase " of his hands " was equivalent to " of his 
inches, or of his size, a hand being the measure of four 
inches." So, in the " Merry Wives of Windsor" (i. 4), Sim- 
ple says : " Ay, forsooth : but he is as tall a man of his hands 
as any is between this and his head," " the expression being 
used probably for the sake of a jocular equivocation in the 
word tall, which meant cither bold or high."* 

Again, in the " Winter's Talc " ( v. 2 ), the Clown tells the 

' "Glossary," vol. ii. p. 871. " Ibid. vol. i. p. 402. 



4Q2 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

Shepherd : " I'll swear to the prince, thou art a tall fellow 
of thy hands, and that thou wilt not be drunk ; but I know 
thou art no tall fellow of thy hands, and that thou wilt be 
drunk ; but I'll swear it, and I would thou wouldst be a tall 
fellow of thy hands." 

A proverbial phrase for being tall from necessity was " to 
blow the nail." In '' 3 Henry VI." (ii. 5) the king says : 

" When dying clouds contend with growing light, 
What time the shepherd, blowing of his nails. 
Can neither call it perfect day, nor night." 

It occurs in the song at the end of "Love's Labour's Lost:" 

"And Dick the shepherd blows his nail." 

"To bite the thumb" at a person implied an insult; 
hence, in " Romeo and Juliet " (i. 1), Sampson says : " I will 
bite my thumb at them ; which is a disgrace to them, if 
they bear it." 

The thumb, in this action, we are told, " represented a fig, 
and the whole was equivalent to a fg for you.'" Decker, 
in his " Dead Term " (1608), speaking of the various groups 
that daily frequented St. Paul's Church, says : " What swear- 
ing is there, what shouldering, what justling, what jeering, 
what byting of thumbs, to beget quarrels?" 

Hare-lip. A cleft lip, so called from its supposed resem- 
blance to the upper lip of a hare. It was popularly beheved 
to be the mischievous act of an elf or malicious fairy. So, 
in "King Lear" (iii. 4), Edgar says of Gloster: " This is the 
foul fiend Flibbertigibbet : he . . . squints the eye, and makes 
the hare-lip." In "A Midsummer-Night's Dream" (v. 2), 
Oberon, in blessing the bridal -bed of Theseus and Hip- 

polyta, says : 

" Never mole, hare-lip, nor scar, 

■■i- •* * =:: * 

Shall upon their children be." 

The expression " hang the lip " meant to drop the lip in 
sullenness or contempt. Thus, in " Troilus and Cressida" 
(iii. i), Helen explains why her brother Troilus is not abroad 

* See page 218. 



THE HUMAN BODY. 493 

by saying: "He hangs the h'p at something." Wc may 
compare, too, the words in " i Henry IV." (ii. 4) : "a fool- 
ish hanging of thy nether lip." 

Head. According to tlie old writers on physiognomy, a 
round head denoted foolishness, a notion to which reference 
is made in " Antony and Cleopatra " (iii. 3), in the following 
dialogue, where Cleopatra, inquiring about Octavia, says to 
the Messenger: 

" Bear'st thou her face in mind ? Is't long, or round ? 
Mcsscftgcr. Round, even to faultiness. 
Cleopatra. For the most part, too, they are foolish that are so." 

In Hill's "Pleasant History," etc. (1613), we read: "The 
head very round, to be forgetful and foolish." Again : " The 
head long, to be prudent and wary." 

Heart. The term "broken heart," as commonly applied 
to death from excessiv^e grief, is not a vulgar error, but may 
arise from violent muscular exertion or strong mental emo- 
tions. In " Macbeth " (iv. 3), Malcolm says : 

"The grief, that does not speak, 
Whispers the o'er-fraught heart, and bids it break." 

We may compare, too. Queen Margaret's words to Buck- 
ingham, in "Richard III." (i. 3), where she prophesies how 

Gloster 

'* Shall split thy very heart with sorrow." 

Mr. Timbs, in his " Mysteries of Life, Death, and Futu- 
rity " (1861, p. 149), has given the following note on the 
subject : " This affection was, it is believed, first described 
by Harvey ; but since his day several cases have been ob- 
served. Morgagni has recorded a few examples : among 
them, that of George II., Avho died suddenly of this disease 
in 1760; and, what is very curious, Morgagni himself fell a 
victim to the same malady. Dr. Elliotson, in his Lumleyan 
Lectures on Diseases of the Heart, in 1839, stated ^'^'^ he 
had only seen one instance; but in the 'Cyclopaedia of Prac- 
tical Medicine ' Dr. Townsend gives a table of twenty-five 
cases, collected from various authors." 



494 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

In olden times the heart was esteemed the seat of the 
understanding. Hence, in "Coriolanus" (i. i), the Citizen 
speaks of " the counsellor heart." With the ancients, also, 
the heart was considered the seat of courage, to which 
Shakespeare refers in " Julius Caesar" (ii. 2): 

" Servant. Plucking the entrails of an offering forth, 
They could not find a heart within the beast. 

Ccesar. The gods do this in shame of cowardice : 
Caesar should be a beast without a heart, 
If he should stay at home to-day for fear." 

Liver. By a popular notion, the liver Avas anciently sup- 
posed to be the seat of love, a superstition to which Shake- 
speare frequently alludes. Thus, in " Love's Labour's Lost " 
(iv. 3), Biron, after listening to Longaville's sonnet, remarks: 

" This is the liver vein, which makes flesh a deity, 
A green goose, a goddess ; pure, pure idolatry." 

In " Much Ado About Nothing" (iv. i), Friar Francis says: 

" If ever love had interest in his liver." ^ 

Again, in " As You Like It " (iii. 2), Rosalind, professing to 
be able to cure love, which, he says, is " merely a madness," 
says to Orlando, " will I take upon me to wash your liver as 
clean as a sound sheep's heart, that there shall not be one 
spot of love int." In "Twelfth Night" (ii. 4), the Duke, 
speaking of women's love, says : 

"Their love may be call'd appetite, 
No motion of the liver, but the palate,'' etc. 

And Fabian (ii. 5), alluding to Olivia's supposed letter to 
Malvolio, says : " This wins him, liver and all." 

Once more, in " Merry Wives of Windsor" (ii. i), Pistol 
alludes to the liver as being the inspirer of amorous pas- 
sions, for, speaking of Falstaff, he refers to his loving Ford's 
wife " with liver burning hot." ^ Douce says, " there is some 

^ Cf. " Antony and Cleopatra" (i. 2) : 

" Soothsayer. You shall be more beloving, than belov'd. 
Charmian. I had rather heat my liver with drinking." 



THE HUMAN BODY. 



495 



reason for thinking that this superstition was borrowed from 
the Arabian physicians, or at least adopted by them ; for, in 
the Turkish tales, an amorous tailor is made to address his 
wife by the titles of ' thou corner of my liver, and soul of my 
love ;' and, in another place, the King of Syria, who had sus- 
tained a temporary privation of his mistress, is said to have 
had 'his liver, which had been burnt up by the loss of her, 
cooled and refreshed at the sight of her.' " ' According to an 
old Latin distich : 

" Cor sapit, pulmo loquitur, fel commoret iras 
Splen ridere facit, cogit amare jecur." 

Bartholomaeus, in his " De Proprieta'dbus Rerum " (lib. v. 39), 
informs us that " the liver is the place of voluptuousness and 
lyking of the flesh." 

Moles. These have, from time imm»emorial, been regarded 
as ominous, and special attention has been paid by the su- 
perstitious to their position on the body." In " A Midsum- 
mer-Night's Dream " (v. i), a mole on a child is spoken of by 
Oberon as a bad omen, who, speaking of the three couples 
who had lately been married, says : 

" And the blots of Nature's hand 
Shall not in their issue stand ; 
Never mole, hare-lip, nor scar, 
Nor mark prodigious, such as are 
Despised in nativity, 
Shall upon their children be." 

lachimo (" Cymbeline," ii. 2) represents Imogen as having 

" On her left breast 
A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops 
P the bottom of a cowslip." 

And we may also compare the words of Cymbeline (v. 5) : 

" Guiderius had 
Upon his neck a mole, a sanguine star; 
It was a mark of wonder." 



' " Illustrations of Shakespeare," 1839, pp. 38, 39. 

^ See Brand's " Pop. Antiq.," 1S49, vol. iii. pp. 252-255. 



4q6 folk-lore of SHAKESPEARE. 

Spleen. This' was once supposed to be the cause of laugh- 
ter, a notion probably referred to by Isabella in " Measure 
for Measure" (ii. 2), where, telling how the angels weep 
over the follies of men, she adds : 

"who, with our spleens, 
Would all themselves laugh mortal.'' 

In " Taming of the Shrew " (Induction, sc. i.), the Lord says : 

" haply my presence 
May well abate the over-merry spleen. 
Which otherwise would grow into extremes." 

And Maria says to Sir Toby, in "Twelfth Night" (iii. 2): 
" If you desire the spleen, and will laugh yourselves into 
stitches, follow me." 

Wits. With our early writers, the five senses were usu- 
ally called the " five wits." So, in/' Much Ado About Noth- 
ing" (i. i), Beatrice says: "In our last conflict four of his 
five wits went halting off, and now is the whole man gov- 
erned with one." In Sonnet cxli., Shakespeare makes a dis- 
tinction between wits and senses : 

" But my five wits, nor my five senses can 
Dissuade one foolish heart from serving thee." 

The five wits, says Staunton, are " common wit, imag- 
ination, fantasy, estimation, memory." Johnson says, the 
" wits seem to have been reckoned five, by analogy to the 
five senses, or the five inlets of ideas." In "King Lear" 
(iii. 4) we find the expression, " Bless thy five wits." 

According to a curious fancy, eating beef was supposed 
to impair the intellect, to which notion Shakespeare has 
several allusions. Thus, in " Twelfth Night " (i. 3), Sir An- 
drew says: " Methinks sometimes I have no more wit than 
a Christian, or an ordinary man has : but I am a great eater 
of beef, and I believe that does harm to my wit." In " Troi- 
lus and Cressida " (ii. i), Thersites says to Ajax : " The plague 
of Greece upon thee, thou mongrel beef-witted lord !" 



CHAPTER XXI. 

FISHES. 

Although it has been suggested that Shakespeare found 
but little recreation in fishing,' rather considering, as he 
makes Ursula say, in " Much Ado About Nothing" (iii. i): 

" The pleasant'st angling is to see the fish 
Cut with her golden oars the silver stream, 
And greedily devour the treacherous bait," 

and that it would be difficult to illustrate a work on anc-lino- 
with quotations from his writings, the Rev. H. N. Ella- 
combe, in his interesting papers'" on ''Shakespeare as an 
Angler," has not only shown the strong probability that he 
was a lover of this sport, but further adds, that " he may be 
claimed as the first English poet that wrote of angling with 
any freedom ; and there can be little doubt that he would not 
have done so if the subject had not been very familiar to him 
— so familiar, that he could scarcely write without dropping 
the little hints and unconscious expressions which prove 
that the subject was not only familiar, but full of pleasant 
memories to him." His allusions, however, to the folk-lore 
associated with fishes are very few ; but the two or three 
popular notions and proverbial sayings which he has quoted 
in connection with them help to embellish this part of our 
subject. 

Carp. This fish was, proverbially, the most cunning of 
fishes, and so " Polonius's comparison of his own worldly- 
wise deceit to the craft required for catching a carp " is most 
apt ("Hamlet," ii. i):' 

' See Harting's " Ornithology of Shakespeare,"' 1 871, p. 3. 

^ " The Antiquary," 1881, vol. iv. p. 193. ' Ibid. 

32 



498 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

" See you now ; 
Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth." 

This notion is founded on fact, the brain of the carp being 
six times as large as the average brain of other fishes. 

Cockle. The badge of a pilgrim was, formerly, a cockle- 
shell, which was worn usually in the front of the hat. " The 
habit," we are told,' " being sacred, this served as a protec- 
tion, and therefore was often assumed as a disguise." The 
escalop was sometimes used, and either of them was consid- 
ered as an emblem of the pilgrim's intention to go beyond 
the sea. Thus, in Ophelia's ballad (" Hamlet," iv. 5, song), 
the lover is to be known : 

" By his cockle hat and staff, 
And his sandal shoon." 

In Peele's "Old Wives' Tale," 1595, we read, "I will give 
thee a palmer's staff of ivory, and a scallop-shell of beaten 
gold." Nares, too, quotes from Green's " Never Too Late " 
an account of the pilgrim's dress : 

" A hat of straw, like to a swain, 
Shelter for the sun and rain, 
With a scallop-shell before." 

Ciittlc. A foul-mouthed fellow was so called, says Mr. 
Halliwell-Phillipps,^ because this fish is said to throw out of 
its mouth, upon certain occasions, an inky and black juice 
that fouls the water ; and, as an illustration of its use in this 
sense, he quotes Doll Tearsheet's words to Pistol, " 2 Henry 
IV." ii. 4 : " By this wine, I'll thrust my knife in your mouldy 
chaps, an you play the saucy cuttle with me." Dyce says 
that the context would seem to imply that the term is equiv- 
alent to " culter, swaggerer, bully." ^ 

Gudgeon. This being the bait for many of the larger 
fish, " to swallow a gudgeon " was sometimes used for to be 
caught or deceived. More commonly, however, the allusion 

^ Nares's " Glossary," vol. i. p. 175. 

"^ " Handbook Index to the Works of Shakespeare," 1866, p. 119. 

= See a note in Dyce's " Glossary," p. 112. 



FISHES. 499 

is to the ease with which the gudgeon itself is caught, as 
in the " Merchant of Venice" (i. i), where Gratiano says: 

" But fish not, with this melancholy bait, 
For this fool-gudgeon." 

Gurnet. The phrase " soused gurnet " was formerly a 
well-known term of reproach, in allusion to which Falstaff, 
in " I Henry IV." (iv. 2), says, " If I be not ashamed of my 
soldiers, I am a soused gurnet." The gurnet, of which there 
are several species, was probably thought a very coarse and 
vulgar dish when soused or pickled. 

Loach. A small fish, known also as " the groundling." 
The allusion to it by one of the carriers, in " i Henry IV." 
(ii. i), who says, " Your chamber-lie breeds fleas like a loach," 
has much puzzled the commentators. It appears, however, 
from a passage in Holland's translation of Pliny's " Natural 
History" (bk. ix. c. xlvii.), that anciently fishes were supposed 
to be infested with fleas : " Last of all some fishes there be 
which of themselves are given to breed fleas and lice ; among 
wdiich the chalcis, a kind of turgot, is one." Malone sug- 
gests that the passage may mean, "breeds fleas as fast as a 
loach breeds loaches ;" this fish being reckoned a peculiarly 
prolific one. It seems probable, however, that the carrier al- 
ludes to one of those fanciful notions which make up a great 
part of natural history among the common people.' At 
the present day there is a fisherman's fancy on the Norfolk 
coast that fish and fleas come together. " Lawk, sir!" said 
an old fellow, near Cromer, to a correspondent of" Notes and 
Queries" (Oct. 7th, 1865), "times is as you may look in my 
flannel-shirt, and scarce see a flea, and then there ain't but a 
very few herrin's ; but times that'll be right alive with 'em, 
and then there's sartin to be a sight o' fish." 

Mr. Houghton, writing in the Academy (May 27th, 1882), 
thinks that in the above passage the small river loach 
{Cobitis barbatuhx) is the fish intended. He says, " At cer- 
tain times of the year, chiefly during the summer months, 

* Nares's "Glossary," vol. ii. p. 518. 



500 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

almost all fresh-water fish are liable to be infested with some 
kind of Epizoa. There are two kinds of parasitic creatures 
which are most commonly seen on various fish caught in 
the rivers and ponds of this country ; and these are the 
Arguliis foliaccus, a crustacean, and the Piscicola pisciuni, a 
small, cylindrical kind of leech." 

Mermaids. From the earliest ages mermaids have had a 
legendary existence — the sirens of the ancients evidently 
belonging to the same remarkable family. The orthodox 
mermaid is half woman, half fish, the fishy half being some- 
times depicted as doubly -\.di\\Qd. Shakespeare frequently 
makes his characters talk about mermaids, as in the " Com- 
edy of Errors " (iii. 2), where Antipholus of Syracuse says: 

" O, train me not, sweet mermaid, with thy note, 
To drown me in thy sister's flood of tears ; 

Sing, siren, for thyself, and I will dote : 

Spread o'er the silver waves thy golden hairs. 

And as a bed I'll take them and there lie, 
And, in that glorious supposition, think 

He gains by death, that hath such means to die." 

And, again, further on, he adds : 

" I'll stop mine ears against the mermaid's song." 

Staunton considers that in these passages the allusion is 
obviously to the long-current opinion that the siren, or mer- 
maid, decoyed mortals to destruction by the witchery of her 
songs. This superstition has been charmingly illustrated by 
Leyden, in his poem, " The Mermaid" (see Scott's "Min- 
strelsy of the Scottish Border," vol. iv. p. 294) : 

" Thus, all to soothe the chieftain's woe, 
Far from the maid he loved so dear, 

The song arose, so soft and slow, 
He seem'd her parting sigh to hear. 

H« ^ * * * ^ * 

That sea-maid's form of pearly light 
Was whiter than the downy spray, 

And round her bosom, heaving bright, 
Her glossy, yellow ringlets play. 



FISHES. 501 

Borne on a foaming, crested wave, 
She reached amain the bounding prow, 

Then, clasping fast the chieftain brave, 
She, plunging, sought the deep below." 

This tradition gave rise to a curious custom in the Isle 
of Man, which, in Waldron's time, was observed on the 
24th of December, though afterwards on St. Stephen's Day. 
It is said that, once upon a time, a fairy of uncommon beau- 
ty exerted such undue influence over the male population 
that she induced, by the enchantment of her sweet voice, 
numbers to follow her footsteps, till, by degrees, she led 
them into the sea, where they perished. This barbarous 
exercise of power had continued for a great length of time, 
till it was apprehended that the island would be exhaust- 
ed of its defenders. Fortunately, however, a knight-errant 
sprang up, who discovered a means of counteracting the 
charms used by this siren — even laying a plot for her de- 
struction, which she only escaped by taking the form of a 
wren. Although she evaded instant annihilation, a spell 
was cast upon her, by which she was condemned, on every 
succeeding New Year's Day, to reanimate the same form, 
with the definite sentence that she must ultimately perish 
by human hand. Hence, on the specified anniversary, every 
effort was made to extirpate the fairy; and the poor wrens 
were pursued, pelted, fired at, and destroyed without mercy, 
their feathers being preserved as a charm against shipwreck 
for one year. At the present day there is no particular 
time for pursuing the wren ; it is captured by boys alone, 
who keep up the old custom chiefly for amusement. On 
St. Stephen's Day, a band of boys go from door to door 
with a wren suspended by the legs, in the centre of two 
hoops crossing each other at right angles, decorated with 
evergreens and ribbons, singing lines called " Hunt the 
Wren." ' 

In "A Midsummer-Night's Dream" (ii. i), Oberon speaks 
of hearing "a mermaid on a dolphin's back ;" and in 

' See " British Popular Customs," pp. 494, 495. 



502 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



" Hamlet," the Queen, referring to Ophelia's death, says 

(iv. 7) : 

" Her clothes spread wide ; 
And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up." 

In two other passages Shakespeare alludes to this legend- 
ary creature. Thus, in " 3 Henry VI." (iii. 2) Gloster boasts 
that he will " drown more sailors than the mermaid shall," 
and in "Antony and Cleopatra" (ii. 2), Enobarbus relates 

how 

" Her gentlewomen, like the Nereides, 
So many mermaids, tended her i' the eyes, 
And made their bends adornings : at the helm 
A seeming mermaid steers." 

In all these cases Shakespeare,' as was his wont, made his 
characters say what they were likely to think, in their sev- 
eral positions and periods of life. It has been suggested,^ 
however, that the idea of the mermaid, in some of the pas- 
sages just quoted, seems more applicable to the siren, espe- 
cially in "A Midsummer-Night's Dream," where the "mer- 
maid on a dolphin's back " could not easily have been so 
placed, had she had a fish-like tail instead of legs. 

Notices of mermaids are scattered abundantly in books 
of bygone times. Mermen and mermaids, men of the sea, 
and women of the sea, having been as " stoutly believed in 
as the great sea-serpent, and on very much the same kind 
of evidence." Holinshed gives a detailed account of a mer- 
man caught at Orford, in Suffolk, in the reign of King John. 
He was kept alive on raw meal and fish for six months, but 
at last " gledde secretelye to the sea, and was neuer after 
scene nor heard off." Even in modern times we are told 
how, every now and then, a mermaid has made her appear- 
ance. Thus, in the Gcntlcmaiis Magazine (Jan., 1747), we 
read : " It is reported from the north of Scotland that some 
time this month a sea creature, known by the name of mer- 
maid, which has the shape of a human body from the trunk 

^ See " Book of Days," vol. ii. pp. 612-614. 

^ Nares's " Glossary," vol. ii. p. 565 ; see Brand's " Pop. Antiq.," 1849, 
vol. iii. pp. 411-414. 



FISHES. 



503 



upwards, but below is wholly fish, was carried some miles 
up the water of De\a-on." In 1824 a mermaid or merman 
made its appearance, when, as the papers of that day inform 
us, " upwards of 150 distinguished fashionables" went to 
see it. 

The " Mermaid " was a famous tavern, situated in Bread 
Street.' As early as the fifteenth century, we are told it 
was one of the haunts of the pleasure -seeking Sir John 
Howard, whose trusty steward records, anno 1464: "Paid 
for wyn at the Mermayd in Bred Street, for my mastyr and 
Syr Nicholas Latimer, xd. ob." In 1603 Sir Walter Raleigh 
established a Literary Club in this house, among its mem- 
bers being Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, 
Selden, Carew, Martin, Donne, etc. It is often alluded to by 
Beaumont and Fletcher. 

Alinnow. This little fish, from its insignificant character, 
is used by " Coriolanus " (iii, i) as a term of contempt: 
"Hear you this Triton of the minnows?" and, again, in 
"Love's Labour's Lost" (i. i), it occurs: "'that base min- 
now of thy mirth.' " 

Pike, An old name for this fish was luce. In the " Merry 
Wives of Windsor" (i. i) we are told that "The luce is the 
fresh fish." There can be no doubt, too, that there is in this 
passage an allusion to the armorial bearings of Shakespeare's 
old enemy. Sir Thomas Lucy. Among the various instances 
of the use of this term we may quote Isaac Walton, who says: 
" The mighty luce or pike is taken to be the tyrant, as the 
salmon is the king, of the fresh waters." Stow, in his " Sur- 
vey of London," describes a procession of the Fishmongers' 
Company in 1298, as having horses painted like sea-luce: 
" Then four salmons of silver on foure horses, and after them 
sixe and fortie armed knightes riding on horses made like 
luces of the sea. 

Porpoise. According to sailors, the playing of porpoises 
round a ship is a certain prognostic of a violent gale of wind ; 
hence the allusion in " Pericles " (ii. i), where one of the 

' " History of Sign-boards," 1866, p. 226. 



504 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



fishermen says, speaking of the storm : " Nay, master, said 
not I as much, when I saw the porpus, how he bounced and 
tumbled ?" Thus, too, in the '' Canterbury Guests, or a Bar- 
gain Broken," by Ravenscroft, we read : " My heart begins 
to leap and play, like a porpice before a storm." And a 
further reference occurs in Wilsford's " Nature's Secrets :" 
" Porpoises, or sea-hogs, when observed to sport and chase 
one another about ships, expect then some stormy weather." 
Sca-inonster. The reference in " King Lear" (i. 4), to the 
"sea-monster " — 

" Ingratitude, thou marble-hearted fiend, 
More hideous, when thou show'st thee in a child, 
Than the sea-monster!" — 

is generally supposed to be the hippopotamus, which, ac- 
cording to Upton, was the hieroglyphical symbol of impiety 
and ingratitude.' Sandys^ gives a picture said to be por- 
trayed in the porch of the temple of Minerva, at Sais, in 
which is the figure of a river-horse, denoting " murder, im- 
pudence, violence, and injustice ; for they say that he killeth 
his sire and ravisheth his own dam." His account is, no 
doubt, taken from Plutarch's " Isis and Osiris ;" and Shake- 
speare may have read it in Holland's translation (p. 1300), 
but why he should call the river-horse a "sea-monster" is 
not very clear. It is more likely, however, that the whale 
is meant.^ 



' Wright's "Notes to King Lear," 1877, p. 133. 
'^ " Travels," 1673, p. 105. 

' Cf. " King Lear," iv. 2 ; " Troilus and Cressida," v. 5 ; "All's Well 
that End's Well," iv. 3. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

SUNDRY SUPERSTITIONS. 

Almanacs. In Shakespeare's day these were published 
under this title : " An Almanack and Prognostication made 
for the year of our Lord God, 1595." So, in the " Winter's 
Tale" (iv. 3), Autolycus says: "the hottest day prognosti- 
cation proclaims ;" that is, the hottest day foretold in the 
almanac. In Sonnet xiv. the prognostications in almanacs 
are also noticed : 

" Not from the stars do I my judgment pluck ; 
And yet methinks I have astronomy, 
But not to tell of good or evil luck, 
Of plagues, of dearths, or season's quality ; 
Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell. 
Pointing to each his thunder, rain, and wind : 
Or say with princes if it shall go well, 
By oft predict that I in heaven find." 

In " Antony and Cleopatra" (i. 2) Enobarbus says : " They 
are greater storms and tempests than almanacs can report ;" 
and in "2 Henry IV." (ii. 4), Prince Henry says: "Saturn 
and Venus this year in conjunction ! what says the almanac 
to that ?" 

Amulets. A belief in the efficacy of an amulet or charm 
to ward off diseases and to avert contagion has prevailed 
from a very early period. The use of amulets was common 
among the Greeks and Romans, whose amulets were princi- 
pally formed of gems, crowns of pearls, necklaces of coral, 
shells, etc. The amulet of modern times has been of the 
most varied kinds ; objects being selected either from the 
animal, vegetable, or mineral kingdom, pieces of old rags or 
garments, scraps of writing in legible or illegible characters, 
in fact, of anything to which any superstitious property has 



5o6 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



been considered to belong.' This form of superstition is 
noticed in " i Henry VI." (v. 3), in the scene laid at Anglers, 
where La Pucelle exclaims: 

" The regent conquers, and the Frenchmen fly. 
Now help, ye charming spells and periapts " 

— periapts being charms which were worn as preservatives 
against diseases or mischief. Thus Cotgrave" explains the 
word as " a medicine hanged about any part of the bodie." 

Ccj'cvionies. These, says Malone, were " omens or signs 
deduced from sacrifices or other ceremonial rites." Thus, in 
"Julius Caesar" (ii. i), Cassius says of Caesar, that — 

" he is superstitious grown of late, 
Quite from the main opinion he held once 
Of fantasy, of dreams, and ceremonies." 

And in the next scene Calpurnia adds: 

" Csesar, I never stood on ceremonies. 
Yet now they fright me." 

Charms. These, as Mr. Pettigrew^ has pointed out, differ 
little from amulets, the difference consisting in the manner 
in which they are used rather than in their nature. Thus, 
whereas the amulet was to be suspended on the person when 
employed, the charm was not necessarily subjected to such 
a method of application. In days gone by, and even at the 
present day, in country districts, so universal has been the 
use of this source of supposed magical power that there is 
scarcely a disease for which a charm has not been given. 
It is not only to diseases of body and mind that the 
superstitious practice has been directed ; having been in 
popular request to avert evil, and to counteract supposed 
malignant influences. As might be expected, Shakespeare 

' Pettigrew's " Medical Superstitions," p. 48. 

^ " French and English Dictionary ;" see Dyce's " Glossary to Shake- 
speare," p. 316; Nares describes it as "a bandage, tied on for magical 
purposes, from Trepicnrno •" see Brand's " Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. iii. 
pp. 324-326 ; Douce's " Illustrations of Shakespeare," 1839, pp. 305-307. 

^ " Medical Superstitions," p. 55. 



SUNDRY SUPERSTITIONS. ■ 507 

has given various allusions to this usage, as, for example, in 
"Cymbeline" (v. 3), where Posthumus says: 

" To day, how many would have given their honours 
To have sav'd their carcases ! took heel to do':, 
And yet died too ! I, in mine own woe charm'd. 
Could not find death where I did hear him groan, 
Nor feel him where he struck " 

— this passage referring to the notion of certain charms be- 
ing powerful enough to keep men unhurt in battle. 

Othello (iii. 4), speaking of the handkerchief which he had 
given to Desdemona, relates : 

"That handkerchief 
Did an Egyptian to my mother give ; 
She was a charmer, and could almost read 
The thoughts of people." 

And in the same play (i. i), Brabantio asks: 

" Is there not charms, 
By which the property of youth and maidhood 
May be abus'd ?" 

Again, in " Much Ado About Nothing" (iii. 2), Benedick, 
who is represented as having the toothache, after listening 
to the banter of his comrades, replies : " Yet is this no charm 
for the toothache." 

Perfect silence seems to have been regarded as indispen- 
sable for the success of any charm ; and Pliny informs us 
that " favete Unguis" was the usual exclamation employed 
on such an occasion. From this circumstance it has been 
suggested that the well-known phrase "to charm a tongue" 
may have originated. Thuswe have the following dialogue 
in "Othello" (v. 2) : 

" la^o. Go to, charm your tongue. 

Emilia. I will not charm my tongue ; I am bound to speak." 

Thus, on the appearance, amid thunder, of the first appari- 
tion to Macbeth, after the witches have performed certain 
charms (iv. i), Shakespeare introduces the following dia- 
logue : 



5o8 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

" Macbeth. Tell me, thou unknown power — 

First Witch. He knows thy thought : 

Hear his speech, but say thou nought." 

Again, in " The Tempest " (iv. i), Prospero says : 

" hush, and be mute, 
Or else our spell is marr'd." 

Metrical Charms. There was a superstition long prevalent 
that life might be taken away by metrical charms/ Reginald 
Scot, in his "Discovery of Witchcraft" (1584), says: "The 
Irishmen addict themselves, etc. ; yea, they will not sticke 
to afifirme that they can rime a man to death." In " i Henry 
VI." (i. i), the Duke of Exeter, referring to the lamented 
death of Henry V., says : 

"Shall we think the subtle-witted French 
Conjurers and sorcerers, that, afraid of him. 
By magic verses have contrived his end ?" 

These " magic verses," to which the death of Henry V. is 
here attributed, were not required to be uttered in his pres- 
ence ; their deadly energy existing solely in the words of 
the imprecation and the malevolence of the reciter, which 
were supposed to render them effectual at any distance. 

Again, the alphabet was called the Christ-cross-row; either 
because a cross was prefixed to the alphabet in the old 
primers, or, more probably, from a superstitious custom of 
writing the alphabet in the form of a cross by way of a charm. 
In " Richard HI." (i. i), Clarence relates how King Edward — 

" Hearkens after prophecies and dreams ; 
And from the cross-row plucks the letter G." 

Dreams. These, considered as prognostics of good or evil, 
are frequently introduced by Shakespeare. In " Troilus and 
Cressida" (v. 3), Andromache exclaims: 

" My dreams will, sure, prove ominous to the day." 

While Romeo (" Romeo and Juliet," v. i) declares: 

" My dreams presage some joyful news at hand." 

' See, under Rat, a similar superstition noticed. 



SUNDRY SUPERSTITIONS. 509 

It is chiefly as precursors of misfortune that the poet has 
availed himself of their supposed influence as omens of 
future fate. Thus, there are few passages in his dramas more 
terrific than the dreams of Richard III, and Clarence; the 
latter especially, as Mr. Drake says,' " is replete with the 
most fearful imagery, and makes the blood run chill with 
horror." 

Dreaming of certain things has generally been supposed 
to be ominous cither of good or ill luck ;' and at the present 
day the credulous pay oftentimes no small attention to their 
dreams, should these happen to have referred to what they 
consider unlucky things. In the same way Shylock, in the 
"Merchant of Venice" (ii. 5), is a victim to much supersti- 
tious dread : 

" Jessica, my girl, 
Look to my house. I am right loath to go : 
There is some ill a brewing towards my rest, 
For I did dream of money-bags to-night." 

In " Julius Czesar," dreaming of banquet is supposed to pre- 
sage misfortune. 

It was also supposed that malicious spirits took advantage 
of sleep to torment their victims;' hence Macbeth (ii. i) 

exclaims: 

" Merciful powers, 
Restrain in me the cursed thoughts that nat^re 
Gives way to in repose !"* 

Dtich. The death of the vanquished person was always 
considered a certain evidence of his guilt. Thus, in " 2 Henry 
VI." (ii. 3), King Henry, speaking of the death of Horner in 
the duel with Peter, says:^ 

" Go, take hence that traitor from our sight ; 
For, by his death, we do perceive his guilt : 
And God in justice hath reveal'd to us 

' " Shakespeare and his Times," p. 355. 

^ See Brand's " Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. iii. pp. 1 27-141. 

' See p. 283. 

* See Malone's "Variorum Shakespeare," 1821, vol. ii. p. 90. 

* See Singer's " Shakespeare," vol. vi. p. 167. 



510 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

The truth and innocence of this poor fellow, 

Which he had thought to have murder'd wrongfully. — 

Come, fellow, follow us for thy reward." 

We may also compare what Arcite says to Palamon in the 
" Two Noble Kinsmen " (iii. 6) : 

" If I fall, curse me, and say I was a coward ; 
For none but such dare die in these just trials." 

Among the customs connected with duelling, it appears that, 
according to an old law, knights were to fight with the lance 
and the sword, as those of inferior rank fought with an ebon 
staff or baton, to the farther end of which was fixed .a bag 
crammed hard with sand.' Thus Shakespeare, in " 2 Henry 
VI." (ii. 3), represents Horner entering " bearing his staff 
with a sand-bag fastened to it." Butler, in his " Hudibras," 
alludes to this custom : 

" Engaged with money-bags, as bold 
As men with sand-bags did of old." 

Steevens adds that " a passage in St. Chrysostom very 
clearly proves the great antiquity of this practice." 

Fortune-tellers. A common method of fortune-tellers, in 
pretending to tell future events, was by means of a beryl or 
glass. In an extract from the " Penal Laws against Witches," 
it is said, " they do answer either by voice, or else set before 
their eyes, in glasses, chrystal stones, etc., the pictures or 
images of the persons or things sought for." It is to this 
kind of juggling prophecy that Angelo, in "Measure for 
Measure" (ii. 2), refers, when he tells how the law — 

" like a prophet. 
Looks in a glass, that shows what future evils, 
Either new, or by remissness new-conceiv'd." 

Again, Macbeth (iv. i), when "a show of eight kings" is 
presented to him, exclaims, after witnessing the seventh : 

" I'll see no more : — 
And yet the eighth appears, who bears a glass, 
Which shows me many more." 

' See Nares's " Glossary," vol. ii. p. 765. 



A 



SUNDRY SUPERSTITIONS. 



511 



Spenser ' has given a circumstantial account of the glass 
which Merlin made for King Ryence. A mirror of the same 
kind was presented to Cambuscan, in the " Squier's Tale " of 
Chaucer ; and we are also told how " a certain philosopher 
did the like to Pompey, the which showed him in a glass the 
order of his enemies' march.*"' Brand, in his " Popular An- 
tiquities,"^ gives several interesting accounts of this method 
of fortune-telling ; and quotes the following from Vallancey's 
" Collectanea de Rebus Hibernicis :" " In the Highlands of 
Scotland, a large chrystal, of a figure somewhat oval, was 
kept by the priests to work charms by ; water poured upon 
it at this day is given to cattle against diseases ; these stones 
are now preserved by the oldest and most superstitious in 
the country; they were once common in Ireland," 

Further allusions to fortune-tellers occur in "Comedy of 
Errors" (v. i), and " Merry Wives of Windsor" (iv. 2). 

It appears, too, that the trade of fortune-telling was, in 
Shakespeare's day, as now, exercised by the wandering 
hordes of gypsies. In "Antony and Cleopatra" (iv. 12), the 
Roman complains that Cleopatra- 

" Like a right gipsy, hath, at fast and loose, 
Beguil'd me to the very heart of loss." 

Giants. The belief in giants and other monsters was much 
credited in olden times, and, "among the legends of nearly 
every race or tribe, few are more universal than those relating 
to giants or men of colossal size and superhuman power."" 
That such stories were current in Shakespeare's day, is at- 
tested by the fact that the poet makes Othello (i. 3), in his 
eloquent defence before the Senate of Venice, when explairi- /^ 
ing his method of courtship, allude to — // 



■ " Fairy Queen,'' bk. lii. c. 2 ; see Singer's " Shakespeare," vol. ix. 
p. 82. 

° Boisteau's " Theatrum Mundi," translated by John Alday (1574). 

' 1849, vol. iii. pp. 60, 61. 

* See Hardvvick's " Traditions, Superstitions, and Folk-Lore," 1872, 
pp. 197, 224. 



512 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

" the Cannibals that each other eat. 
The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads 
Do grow beneath their shoulders." 

In " The Tempest" (iii. 3), Gonzalo relates how — 

" When we were boys, 
Who would believe that there were mountaineers 
Dew-lapp'd like bulls, whose throats had hanging at 'em 
Wallets of flesh ? or that there were such men. 
Whose heads stood in their breasts ?" 

And after the appearance of Prospero's magic repast, Sebas- 
tian says : 

" Now I will believe 
That there are unicorns ; that in Arabia 
There is one tree, the phoenix' throne ; one phcenix 
At this hour reigning there." 

Among the numerous references to giants by Shakespeare, 
we may quote the following. In " 2 Henry VI." (ii. 3), 
Horner says : " Peter, have at thee with a downright blow 
[as Bevis of Southampton fell upon Ascapart]."' 

Ascapart, according to the legend, was " ful thyrty fote 
longe," and was conquered by Sir Bevis of Southampton. 

In " Cymbeline " (iii. 3), Belarius says : 

"the gates of monarchs 
Are arch'd so high, that giants may jet through 
And keep their impious turbans on, without 
Good morrow to the sun." 

In the " Merry Wives of Windsor " (ii. i), Mrs. Page says : 
" I had rather be a giantess, and lie under Mount Pelion.'"' 

Lucky Days. From the most remote period certain days 
have been supposed to be just as lucky as others are the 
reverse, a notion which is not confined to any one country. 
In Shakespeare's day great attention was paid to this super- 
stitious fancy, which is probably alluded to in the " Winter's 



' The addition in brackets is rejected by the editors of the Globe 
edition. 

■ Cf. " Measure for Measure," ii. 2, iii. i ; " Much Ado About Noth- 
ing," V. I ; " Love's Labour's Lost," iii. i. 



SUNDRY SUPERSTITIONS. 



513 



Tale " (iii. 3), where the Shepherd says to the Clown, " 'Tis 
a lucky day, boy ; and we'll do good deeds on't." 
In " King John " (iii. i) Constance exclaims : 

" What hath this day deserv'd ? what hath it done, 
That it in golden letters should be set 
Among the high tides in the calendar ? 
Nay, rather turn this day out of the week, 
This day of shame, oppression, perjury : 
Or, if it must stand still, let wives with child 
Pray that their burthens may not fall this day, 
Lest that their hopes prodigiously be cross'd : 
But on this day let seamen fear no wreck ; 
No bargains break that are not this day made : 
This day, all things begun come to ill end, 
Yea, faith itself to hollow falsehood change !" 

Again, Macbeth (iv. i) says : ] ^^ 

" Let this pernicious hour 
Stand aye accursed in the calendar !"' 

In the old almanacs the days supposed to be favorable or 
unfavorable are enumerated, allusion to which occurs in 
Webster's " Duchess of Malfy," 1623 : 

" By the almanack, I think, 
To choose good days and shun the critical." 

At the present day this superstition still retains its hold 
on the popular mind, and in the transactions of life exerts 
an important influence.' 

Magic. The system of magic, which holds such a promi- 
nent place in " The Tempest," was formerly an article in the 
popular creed, and as such is frequently noticed by the Avrit- 
ers of Shakespeare's time. Thus, in describing Prospero, 
Shakespeare has given him several of the adjuncts, besides 
the costume, of the popular magician, much virtue being 
inherent in his very garments. So Prospero, when address- 
ing his daughter (i. 2), says : 

' See Brands " Pop. Antiq.," 1879, vol. i. pp. 44-51 ; Jones's " Credu- 
lities Past and Present," pp. 493-507 ; Hampson's "OEvi Medii Kalen- 
darium," vol. i. p. 210; see an article on " Day Fatality" in John Au- 
brey's " Miscellanies." 

33 



CI4 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

" Lend thy hand, 
And pluck my magic garment from me. — So ; 
Lie there, my art." 

A similar importance is assigned to his staff, for he tells 
Ferdinand (i. 2) : 

" I can here disarm thee with this stick. 
And make thy weapon drop." 

And when he abjures the practice of magic, one of the 
requisites is "to break his staff," and to (v. i) 

" Bury it certain fathoms in the earth." 

The more immediate instruments of power were books, 
by means of which spells were usually performed. Hence, 
in the old romances, the sorcerer is always furnished with a 
book, by reading certain parts of which he is enabled to 
summon to his aid what demons or spirits he has occasion 
to employ. When he is deprived of his book his power 
ceases. Malone quotes, in illustration of this notion, Cali- 
ban's words in " The Tempest" (iii. 2): 



" Remember, 
First to possess his books ; for without them 
He's but a sot, as I am, nor hath not 
One spirit to command." 



^ 



Prospero, too, declares (iii. i) : 

" I'll to my book ; 
For yet, ere supper time, must I perform 
Much business appertaining." 

And on his relinquishing his art he says that : 

" Deeper than did ever plummet sound 
I'll drown my book." 

Those who practise nocturnal sorcery are styled, in 
"Troilus and Cressida " (iv. 2)," venomous wights." 

Merlin s Pi'opliccics. In Shakespeare's day there was an 
extensive belief in strange and absurd prophecies, which 
were eagerly caught up and repeated by one person to an- 
other. This form O'f superstition is alluded to in " i Henry 



SUNDRY SUPERSTITIONS. 515 

IV." (iii. i), where, after Owen Glendowcr has been descant- 
ing on the " omens and portents dire " which heralded his 
nativity, and Hotspur's unbeheving and taunting repHes to 
the chieftain's assertions, the poet makes Hotspur, on Mor- 
timer's saying, / , 

" Fie, cousin Percy ! how you cross my father I" 

thus reply : 

" I cannot choose: sometime he angers me, 
With telling me of the moldwarp and the ant, 
Of the dreamer Merlin and his prophecies ; 
And of a dragon and a finless fish." 

In "King Lear" (iii. 2) the Fool says: 

" ril speak a prophecy ere I go : 

When priests are more in word than matter ; 

When brewers mar their malt with water; 

When nobles are their tailors' tutors ; 

No heretics burn'd, but wenches' suitors ; 

When every case in law is right ; 

No squire in debt, nor no poor knight ; 

W^hen slanders do not live in tongues . 

Nor cutpurses come not to throngs ; 

When usurers tell their gold i' the field ; 

And bawds and v/horcs do churches build ; — 

Then shall the realm of Albion 

Come to great confusion : 

Then comes the time, who lives to see't. 

That going shall be us'd with feet. 
This prophecy Merlin shall make; for I live before his time." 

This witty satire was probably against the prophecies 
attributed to Merlin, which were then prevalent among the 
people.' 

F'ormerly, too, prophecies of apparent impossibilities were 
common in Scotland ; such as the removal of one place to 
another. So in " Macbeth " (iv. i), the apparition says: 

"Macbeth shall never vanquish'd be, until 
Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill 
Shall come against him." 



' See Kelly's " Notices Illustrative of the Drama and Other Amuse- 
ments at Leicester," 1865, pp. 116, 118. 



ti6 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

Portents and Prodigies. In years gone the belief in super- 
natural occurrences was a common article of faith ; and our 
ancestors made use of every opportunity to prove the truth 
of this superstitious belief. The most usual monitions of 
this kind were, " lamentings heard in the air; shakings and 
tremblings of the earth ; sudden gloom at noon-day ; the 
appearance of meteors ; the shooting of stars ; eclipses of 
the sun and moon ; the moon of a bloody hue ; the shriek- 
ing of owls ; the croaking of ravens ; the shrilling of crick- 
ets ; night-howlings of dogs; the death-watch; the chatter- 
ing of pies ; wild neighing of horses ; blood dropping from 
the nose ; winding-sheets ; strange and fearful noises, etc.," 
many of which Shakespeare has used, introducing them as 
the precursors of murder, sudden death, disasters, and super- 
human events.' Thus in " Richard 11." (ii. 4), the following 
prodigies are selected as the forerunners of the death or fall 
of kings: 

" 'Tis thought, the king is dead : we will not stay. 
The bay-trees in our country are all wither'd, 
And meteors fright the fixed stars of heaven ; 
The pale-fac'd moon looks bloody on the earth, 
And lean-look'd prophets whisper fearful change ; 
Rich men look sad, and ruffians dance and leap. 
The one in fear to lose what they enjoy, 
The other to enjoy by rage and war : 
These signs forerun the death or fall of kings." 

Previous to the assassination of Julius Csesar, we are told, in 
" Hamlet " (i. i), how : 




" In the most high and palmy state of Rome, 
A little ere the mightiest Julius fell, 
The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead 
Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets ; 
As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood, 
Disasters in the sun ; and the moist star, 
Upon whose influence Neptune's empire stands, 
Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse." 



1 



More appalling still are the circumstances which preceded 
^ Drake's " Shakespeare and his Times," p. 352. 



SUNDRY SUPERSTITIONS. 



517 



and accompanied the murder of Duncan (" ^lacbcth," ii. 3). 
We may also compare the omens which marked the births 
of Owen Glendower and Richard III. Indeed, the supposed 
sympathy of the elements with human joy or sorrow or 
suffering is evidently a very ancient superstition ; and this 
presumed sensitiveness, not only of the elements, but of 
animated nature, to the perpetration of deeds of darkness 
and blood by perverted nature, has in all ages been exten- 
sively believed. It is again beautifully illustrated in the 
lines where Shakespeare makes Lenox, on the morning fol- 
lowing the murder of Duncan by his host (" Macbeth," ii. 3), 
give the following narrative : 

" The night has been unruly ; where we lay, 
Our chimneys were blown down ; and, as they say, 
Lamentings heard i' the air ; strange screams of death ; 
And prophesying with accents terrible 
Of dire combustion, and confus'd events, 
New hatch'd to the woeful time : the obscure bird 
Clamour'd the livelong night : some say, the earth 
Was feverous and did shake." 

This idea is further illustrated in the dialogue which follows, 
between Ross and an old man : 

" Old Man. Threescore and ten I can remember well : 
Within the volume of which time I have seen 
Hours dreadful, and things strange : but this sore night 
Hath trifled former knowings. 

Ross. Ah, good father, 

Thou seest, the heavens, as troubled with man's act, 
Threaten his bloody stage : by the clock, 'tis day. 
And yet dark night strangles the travelling lamp : 
Is't night's predominance, or the day's shame. 
That darkness does the face of earth entomb, 
When living light should kiss it?" 

Supernatural Ant Jior it y of Kings. The belief in the super- 
natural authority of monarchs is but a remnant of the long- 
supposed " divine right " of kings to govern, which resulted 
from a conviction that they could trace their pedigrees back 



5i8 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



to the deities themselves.' Thus Shakespeare even puts 
into the mouth of the murderer and usurper Claudius, King 
of Denmark, the following sentence : 

" Let him go, Gertrude : do not fear our person : 
There's such divinity doth hedge a king, 
That treason can but peep to what it would, 
Acts Httle of his will." 

This notion is by no means confined to either civilized or 
semi-civilized nations. It is, says Mr. Hardwick, " a universal 
feeling among savage tribes." The ignorant serf of Russia 
believed, and, indeed, yet believes, that if the deity were to 
die the emperor would succeed to his power and authority. 
SympatlLctic Indications. According to a very old tradi- 
tion the wounds of a murdered person were supposed to 
bleed afresh at the approach or touch of the murderer. This 
effect, though impossible, remarks Nares," except it were by 
miracle, was firmly believed, and almost universally, for a very 
long period. Poets, therefore, were fully justified in their 
use of it. Thus Shakespeare, in " Richard III." (i. 2) makes 
Lady Anne, speaking of Richard, Duke of Gloster, say: 

" O, gentlemen, see, see ! dead Henry's wounds 
Open their congeal'd mouths, and bleed afresh ! — ■ 
Blush, blush, thou lump of foul deformity ; 
For 'tis thy presence that exhales this blood 
From cold and empty veins, where no blood dwells ; 
Thy deed, inhuman and unnatural, 
Provokes this deluge most unnatural." 

Stow alludes to this circumstance in his '' Annals " (p. 424). 
He says the king's body " was brought to St. Paul's in an 
open coffin, barefaced, where he bled ; thence he was car- 
ried to the Blackfriars, and there bled." Matthew Paris 
also states that after Henry II. 's death his son Richard 
came to view the body — "Quo superveniente, confestim 
erupit sanguis ex naribus regis mortui ; ac si indignaretur 
spiritus in adventue ejus, qui ejusdem mortis causa esse 

' " Traditions, Superstitions, and Folk-Lore," p. 81. 

' " Glossary," vol. ii. p. 974. 



SUNDRY SUPERSTITIONS. 519 

credebatur, ut videretur sanguis clamare ad Deum." ' In 
the "Athenian Oracle" (i. 106), this supposed phenomenon 
is thus accounted for : " The blood is congealed in the body 
for two or three days, and then becomes liquid again, in its 
tendency to corruption. The air being heated by many 
persons coming about the body, is the same thing to it as 
motion is. 'Tis observed that dead bodies will bleed in a 
concourse of people, when murderers are absent, as well as 
present, yet legislators have thought fit to authorize it, and 
use this trial as an argument, at least to frighten, though 'tis 
no conclusive one to condemn them." Among other allusions 
to this superstition may be mentioned one by King James 
in his " Daemonology," where we read : " In a secret murder, 
if the dead carkasse be at any time thereafter handled by the 
murderer, it will gush out of blood, as if the blood were cry- 
ing to heaven for revenge of the murderer." It is spoken 
of also in a note to chapter v. of the " Fair Maid of Perth," 
that this bleeding of a corpse was urged as an evidence of 
guilt in the High Court of Justiciary at Edinburgh as late 
as the year 1668. An interesting survival of this curious 
notion exists in Durham, wdiere, says Mr. Henderson," 
" touching of the corpse by those who come to look at it is 
still expected by the poor on the part of those who come to 
their house while a dead body is lying in it, in token that 
they wished no ill to the departed, and were in peace and 
amity with him." 

We may also compare the following passage, where Mac- 
beth (iii. 4), speaking of the Ghost, says : 

" It will have blood ; they say, blood will have blood : 
Stones have been known to move, and trees to speak ; 
Augurs and understood relations have 
By magot-pies and choughs and rooks brought forth 
The secret'st man of blood." 

Shakespeare perhaps alludes to some story in which the 
stones covering the corpse of a murdered man were said to 

' See Brand's " Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. iii. pp. 229-231. 
^ Folk-Lore of Northern Counties," 1849, P- 57- 



e20 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

have moved of themselves, and so revealed the secret. The 
idea of trees speaking probably refers to the story of the tree 
which revealed to yEneas the murder of Polydorus (Verg., 
"^neid," iii. 22, 599). Indeed, in days gone by, this super- 
stition was carried to such an extent that we are told, in 
DTsraeli's " Curiosities of Literature," " by the side of the 
bier, if the slightest change was observable in the eyes, the 
mouth, feet, or hands of the corpse, the murderer was con- 
jectured to be present, and many an innocent spectator 
must have suffered death. This practice forms a rich pict- 
ure in the imagination of our old writers ; and their his- 
tories and ballads are labored into pathos by dwelling on 
this phenomenon." 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

MISCELLANEOUS CUSTOMS, ETC. 

Badge of Poverty. In the reign of William III,, those 
who received parish relief had to wear a badge. It was the 
letter P, with the initial of the parish to which they be- 
longed, in red or blue cloth, on the shoulder of the right 
sleeve. In " 2 Henry VI." (v. i) Clifford says: 

" Might I but know thee by thy household badge." 

Bcdfelknv. A proof of the simplicity of manners in olden 
times is evidenced by the fact that it was customary for 
men, even of the highest rank, to sleep together. In '' Hen- 
ry V." (ii. 2) Exeter says : 

" Nay, but the man that was his bedfellow, 
Whom he hath duU'd and cloy'd with gracious favours." 

" This unseemly custom," says Malone, " continued common 
till the middle of the last century, if not later." Beaumont 
and Eletchcr, in the "Coxcomb" (i. i), thus refer to it : 

" Must we, that have so long time been as one. 
Seen cities, countries, kingdoms, and their wonders, 
Been bedfellows, and in our various journey 
Mixt all our observations." 

In the same way, letters from noblemen to each other often 
began with the appellation bedfelloiv.^ 

Curfezv Bell, which is generally supposed to be of Nor- 
man origin, is still rung in some of our old country vil- 
lages, although it has long lost its significance. It seems to 
have been as important to ghosts as to living men, it being 
their signal for walking, a license which apparently lasted 
till the first cock. Fairies, too, and other spirits, were un- 

' Nares's " Glossary'," vol. i. p. 6^. 



522 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

der the same regulations ; and hence Prospero, in " The Tem- 
pest " (v. i), says of his elves that they 

" rejoice 
To hear the solemn curfew." 

In "King Lear"(iii. 4) we find the fiend Flibbertigibbet 
obeying the same rule, for Edgar says: "This is the foul 
fiend Flibbertigibbet ; he begins at curfew, and walks till 
the first cock." 

In " Measure for Measure " (iv. 2) we find another allusion : 

"Duke. The best and wholesom'st spirits of the night 
Envelope you, good provost ! Who call'd here of late } 
Provost. None, since the curfew rung." 

And, once more, in " Romeo and Juliet " (iv. 4), Capulet says : 

" Come, stir, stir, stir ! the second cock hath crow'd, 
The curfew bell hath rung, 'tis three o'clock."^ 

Sacring BclL This was a bell which rang for processions 
and other holy ceremonies." It is mentioned in " Henry 
VIII." (iii. 2), by the Earl of Surrey : 

" I'll startle you 
Worse than the sacring bell." 

It is rung in the Romish Church to give notice that the 
" Host " is approaching, and is now called " Sanctus bell," 
from the words " Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus Dominus Deus 
Sabaoth," pronounced by the priest. 

On the graphic passage where Macbeth (ii. i) says: 

" The bell invites me. 
Hear it not, Duncan ; for it is a knell 
That summons thee to heaven or to hell " — 

Malone has this note : " Thus Raleigh, speaking of love, in 
England's ' Helicon ' (1600) : 

" ' It is perhaps that sauncing bell 
That toules all into heaven or hell.' 

' See Brand's " Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. iii. pp. 220-225 ; also, Har- 
land and Wilkinson's " Lancashire Folk-Lore," 1867, p. 44. 
^ Dyce's " Glossary," p. 379. 



MISCELLANEOUS CUSTOMS. 



523 



Sauncing being probably a mistake for sacring or saint's bell, 

originally, perhaps, written saintis bell." In "Hudibras" 

we find : 

" The old saintis bell that rings all in." 

Carpet-knights. These were knights dubbed at court by 
mere favor, and not on the field of battle, for their military 
exploits. In " Twelfth Night " (iii. 4), Sir Toby defines one 
of them thus : " He is knight, dubbed with unhatched ra- 
pier, and on carpet consideration." 

A " trencher knight " was probably synonymous, as in 
" Love's Labour's Lost " (v. 2) : 

"Some mumble-news, some trencher-knight, some Dick." 

These carpet-knights were sometimes called " knights of the 
green cloth." ' 

Chair Days. Days of old age and infirmity. So, in " 2 
Henry VI." (v. 2), young Clifford, on seeing his dead father, 

says : 

" Wast thou ordain'd, dear father, 
To lose thy youth in peace, and to achieve 
The silver livery of advised age, 
And, in thy reverence, and thy chair-days, thus 
To die in ruffian battle ?" 

Chivalry. The expression " sworn brothers," which Shake- 
speare several times employs, refers to the " fratres jurati," 
who, in the days of chivalry, mutually bound themselves by 
oath to share each other's fortune. Thus, Falstaff says of 
Shallow, in " 2 Henry IV." (iii. 2) : " He talks as familiarly 
of John o' Gaunt as if he had been sworn brother to him." 
In "Henry V." (ii. i), Rardolph says: "we'll be all three 
sworn brothers to France." In course of time it was used 
in a laxer sense, to denote intimacy, as in " Much Ado About 
Nothing" (i. i), where Beatrice says of Benedick, that " He 
hath every month a new sworn brother.'"' 

According to the laws of chivalry, a person of superior 



' See Douce's " Illustrations of Shakespeare," pp. 65, 66. 
. ■■' We may compare, too, what Coriolanus says (ii. 3) : "I will, sir, 
flatter my sworn brother, the people." 



524 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



birth might not be challenged by an inferior; or, if chal- 
lenged, might refuse combat, a reference to which seems to 
be made by Cleopatra (" Antony and Cleopatra," ii. 4) : 

" I will not hurt him. — 
These hands do lack nobility, that they strike 
A meaner than myself." 

Again, in " Troilus and Cressida " (v. 4), the same practice is 
alluded to by Hector, who asks Thersites : 

"What art thou, Greek.' art thou for Hector's match.-* 
Art thou of blood and honour ?" 

Singer quotes from "Melville's Memoirs" (1735, p. 165): 
" The Laird of Grange offered to fight Bothwell, who an- 
swered that he was not his equal. The like answer made 
he to Tullibardine. Then my Lord Lindsay offered to fight 
him, which he could not well refuse ; but his heart failed 
him, and he grew cold on the business." 

Clubs. According to Malone, it was once a common cus- 
tom, on the breaking-out of a fray, to call out "Clubs, clubs!" 
to part the combatants. Thus, in " i Henry VL" (i. 3), the 
Mayor declares : 

" I'll call for clubs, if you will not away." 

\\\ " Titus Andronicus " (ii. i), Aaron says : 

"Clubs, clubs! these lovers will not keep the peace." 

" Clubs," too, " was originally the popular cry to call forth 
the London apprentices, who employed their clubs for the 
preservation of the public peace. Sometimes, however, they 
used those weapons to raise a disturbance, as they are de- 
scribed doing in the following passage in " Henry VHL" 
(v. 4) : "I miss'd the meteor once, and hit that woman ; 
who cried out * Clubs !' when I might see from far some forty 
truncheoners draw to her succour, which were the hope o' 
the Strand, where she was quartered." ' 

Color-Lore. Green eyes have been praised by poets of 

' Cf. " Romeo and Juliet," i. i ; "As You Like It," v. 2. 



MISCELLANEOUS CUSTOMS. 



525 



nearly every land,' and, according to Armado, in " Love's 

Labour's Lost " (i. 2), " Green, indeed, is the colour of lovers." 

In "A Midsummer-Night's Dream" (v. i), Thisbc laments: 

" Lovers, make moan : 
His eyes were green as leeks." 

The Nurse, in her description of Romeo's rival (" Romeo 

and Juliet," iii. 5), says: 

" An eagle, madam, 
Hath not so green, so quick, so fair an eye 
As Paris hath." 

In the " Two Noble Kinsmen " (v. i), Emilia, praying to Di- 
ana, says : 

" O vouchsafe. 
With that thy rare green eye — which never j^et 
Beheld thing maculate— look on thy virgin." 

The words of Armado have been variously explained as 
alluding to green eyes — Spanish writers being peculiarly en- 
thusiastic in this praise — to the willow worn by unsuccessful 
lovers, and to their melancholy." It has also been suggested 
that, as green is the color most suggestive of freshness and 
spring-time, it may have been considered the most appro- 
priate lover's badge. At the same time, however, it is curi- 
ous that, as green has been regarded as an ominous color, it 
should be connected with lovers, for, as an old couplet re- 
marks : 

" Those dressed in blue 

Have lovers true ; 

In green and white, 

Forsaken quite."* 

In "Merchant of Venice" (iii. 2), "green-eyed jealousy," 
and in "Othello" (iii. 3), its equivalent, "green-eyed mon- 
ster," are expressions used by Shakespeare. 

Yclloio is an epithet often, too, applied to jealousy, by the 

' See Singer's " Shakespeare," vol. viii. p. 204. 

^ See Douce's " Illustrations of Shakespeare," p. 133. 

' See an article by Mr. Black, in Antiquary, 1881, vol. iii. 

* See Henderson's " Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties," pp. 34. 35. 



526 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



old writers. In the " Merry Wives of Windsor " (i. 3), Nym 
says he will possess Ford "with yellowness." In "Much 
Ado About Nothing " (ii. i), Beatrice describes the Count as 
" civil as an orange, and something of that jealous complex- 
ion." In " Twelfth Night " (ii. 4), Viola tells the Duke how 
her father's daughter loved a man, but never told her love : 

" She pin'd in thought, 
And with a green and yellow melancholy 
She sat like patience on a monument." 

Dinner Customs. In days gone by there was but one 
salt-cellar on the table, which was a large piece of plate, 
generally much ornamented. The tables being long, the 
salt was commonly placed about the middle, and served as 
a kind of boundary to the different quality of the guests 
invited. Those of distinction were ranked above ; the space 
below being assigned to the dependants, inferior relations 
of the master of the house, etc.^ Shakespeare would seem 
to allude to this custom in the " Winter's Tale " (i. 2), where 
Leontes says: 

" lower messes, 
Perchance, are to this business purbhnd ?'' 

Upon which passage Steevens adds, " Leontes comprehends 
inferiority of understanding in the idea of inferiority of 
rank." Ben Jonson, speaking of the characteristics of an 
insolent coxcomb, remarks : " His fashion is not to take 
knowledge of him that is beneath him in clothes. He never 
drinks below the salt." 

Ordinary. This was a public dinner, where each paid his 
share, an allusion to which custom is made by Enobarbus, 
in "Antony and Cleopatra " (ii. 2), who, speaking of Antony, 
says : 

" Being barber'd ten times o'er, goes to the feast. 

And, for his ordinary, pays his heart 

For what his eyes eat only." 

' Giflford's note on " Massinger's Works," 181 3, vol. i. p. 170; see 
Dyce's " Glossary to Shakespeare," pp. 269, 380. 



MISCELLANEOUS CUSTOMS. 



527 



Again, in "All's Well that Ends Well" (ii. 3), Lafcu says: 
" I did think thee, for two ordinaries, to be a pretty wise 
fellow ; thou didst make tolerable vent of thy travel." 

The " ordinary " also denoted the lounging-place of the 
men of the town, and the fantastic gallants who herded to- 
gether. They were, says the author of " Curiosities of Lit- 
erature " (vol. iii. p. 82), " the exchange for news, the echoing- 
places for all sorts of town talk ; there they might hear of 
the last new play and poem, and the last fresh widow sigh- 
ing for some knight to make her a lady ; these resorts were 
attended also to save charges of housekeeping." 

Drinking Customs. Shakespeare has given several allu- 
sions to the old customs associated with drinking, which 
have always varied in different countries. At the present 
day many of the drinking customs still observed are very 
curious, especially those kept up at the universities and inns- 
of-court. 

Alms-drink was a phrase in use, says Warburton, among 
good fellows, to signify that liquor of another's share which 
his companion drank to ease him. So, in " Antony and 
Cleopatra" (ii. 7), one of the servants says of Lepidus: 
" They have made him drink alms-drink." 

By-drinkings. This was a phrase for drinkings between 
meals, and is used by the Hostess in " i Henry IV." (iii. 3), 
who says to Falstaff : " You owe money here besides, Sir 
John, for your diet, and by-drinkings." 

Hooped Pots. In olden times drinking-pots were made 
with hoops, so that, when two or more drank from the same 
tankard, no one should drink more than his share. There 
were generally three hoops to the pots : hence, in " 2 Henry 
VI." (iv. 2), Cade says : " The three-hooped pot shall have 
ten hoops." In Nash's " Pierce Pennilesse " we read : " I 
believe hoopcs on quart pots were invented that every man 
should take his hoope, and no more." 

The phrases " to do a man right " and " to do him rea- 
son " were, in years gone by, the common expressions in 
pledging healths ; he who drank a bumper expected that a 
bumper should be drunk to his toast. To this practice 



528 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



alludes the scrap of a song which Silence sings in " 2 Henry 

IV.-' (v. 3) : 

" Do nic right, 
And dub me knight : 
Samingo." 

lie who drank, too, a bumper on his knee to the health 
of his mistress was dubbed a knight for the evening. The 
word Samingo is either a corruption of, or an intended blun- 
der for, San Domingo, but why this saint should be the pa- 
tron of topers is uncertain. 

RiU(Sc\ According to Gifford,' a rof/sc was a large glass in 
which a health was given, the drinking of which, by the rest 
of the company, formed a carouse. Hamlet (i. 4) says : 

"The king doth wake to-night, and takes his rouse." 

The word occurs again in the following act (i), where Polo- 
nius uses the phrase " o'ertook in's rouse ;" and in the sense 
of a bumper, or glass of liquor, in " Othello " (ii. 3), " they 
have given me a rouse already." 

S/ii'c-r Ale. This term, which is used in the "Taming of 
the Shrew " (Induction, sc. 2), by Sly — " Ask IMarian Hacket, 
the fat ale-wife of Wincot, if she know me not : if she say I 
am not fourteen pence on the score for sheer ale " — accord- 
ing to some expositors, means " ale alone, nothing but ale," 
rather than " unmixed ale." 

Sneak -cup. This phrase, which is used by Falstaff in 
" I Henry IV." (iii. 3) — " the prince is a Jack, a sneak-cup " 
— was used to denote one who balked his glass. 

Earnest Money. It was, in olden times, customary to rat- 
ify an agreement by a bent coin. In " Henry VIII." (ii. 3), 
the old lady remarks : 

" 'Tis strange : a three-pence bow'd would hire me, 
Old as I am. to queen it." 

There were, however, no threepences so early as the reign 
of Henry VIII. 

* See Dj'ce, vol. iv. p. 395. 



MISCELLANEOUS CUSTOMS. 529 

Exclamatio)is, "Charity, for the Lord's sake 1" was the 
form of ejaculatory suppHcation used by imprisoned debtors 
to the passers-by. So, in Davies's " Epigrams " (161 1) : 

" Good, gentle writers, ' for the Lord's sake, for the Lord's sake,' 
Like Ludgate prisoner, lo, I, begging, make 
My mone." 

In " Measure for Measure " (iv. 3), the phrase is alluded to 
by Pompcy : " all great doers in our trade, and are now ' for 
the Lord's sake.' " ' 

" Cry Budget." A watchword. Thus Slender says to 
Shallow, in the "Merry Wives of Windsor" (v. 2): "We 
have a nay-word, how to know one another: I come to her 
in white, and cry 'mum;' she cries 'budget;' and by that 
we know one another." 

" God save the mark." " Romeo and Juliet " (iii. 2). This 
exclamation has hitherto baffled the research of every com- 
mentator. It occurs again in " i Henry IV." (i. 3) ; and in 
the "Merchant of Venice" (ii. 2) and in "Othello" (i. i), 
we have " God bless the mark." In the quarto, 1597, instead 
of " God save the mark " in the first passage quoted, we have 
"God save the sample," an expression equally obscure.' 

Halidoui. This exclamation was used, says Minsheu/ by 
old countrymen, by manner of swearing. In " Two Gentle- 
men of Verona " (iv. 2j, the Hostess says : " By my halidom, 
I was fast asleep ;" the probable derivation being //£>/;', with 
the termination dome. 

Hall! Hall! An exclamation formerly used, to make a 
clear space in a crowd, for any particular purpose, was ''A hall, 
ct haliy So, in " Romeo and Juliet " (i. 5), Capulct says : 

" Come, musicians, play. — 
A hall, a hall I give room I and foot it, girls." 

Hay. This is equivalent to " you have it," an exclamation 
in fencing, when a thrust or hit is received by the antagonist. 

' Staunton's " Shakespeare," vol. i. p. 257. 
" "Guide into Tongues," 1607. 

34 



530 



FOLK-LORE OF 'SHAKESPEARE, 



In " Romeo and Juliet" (ii. 4), Mercutio speaks of" the punto 
reverso ! the hay !" 

Hold. To cry hold ! when persons were fighting, was an 
authoritative way of separating them, according to the old 
military law. So Macbeth, in his struggle with Macduff, says : 

" And damn'd be he that first cries, ' Hold, enough !'" 

We may compare Lady Macbeth's words (i. 5) : 

" Nor heaven peep through the blanket* of the dark, 
To cry, ' Hold, hold !' " 

" r the name of me." A vulgar exclamation formerly in 
use. So in the "Winter's Tale" (iv. 2) it is used by the 
Clown. 

" O ho, O ho /" This savage exclamation was, saysSteevens, 
constantly appropriated by the writers of our ancient mys- 
teries and moralities to the devil. In " The Tempest" (i. 2), 
Caliban, when rebuked by Prospero for seeking " to violate 
the honor of my child," replies : 

" O ho, O ho ! would it had been done ! 
Thou didst prevent me ; I had peopled else 
This isle with Calibans." 

Push. An exclamation equivalent io pish.^ It is used by 
Leonato in " Much Ado About Nothing" (v. i): 

" And made a push at chance and sufiferance ;" 

and again, in " Timon of Athens" (iii. 6), where one of the 
lords says: " Push ! did you see my cap?" 

Rk'o was an exclamation often used in Bacchanalian revels, 
but its origin is uncertain. It occurs in " i Henry IV." 
(ii. 4) : " ' Rivo !' says the drunkard." Gifford suggests that 
it is " corrupted, perhaps, from the Spanish rw, which is 
figuratively used for a large quantity of liquor," a deriva- 
tion, however, which IMr. Dyce does not think probable. 

^ See Dyce's " Glossary," p. 343. 



MISCELLANEOUS CUSTOMS. 



531 



Sncck-up. This was an exclamation of contempt, equiva- 
lent to " go and hang yourself." ' .It is used by Sir Toby in 
" Twelfth Night " (ii. 3), in reply to Malvolio's rebuke : " We 
did keep time, sir, in our catches. Sneck up !" 

So-ho. This is the cry of sportsmen when the hare is 
found in her seat. 

Spy. " I spy " is the usual exclamation at a well-known 
childish game called " Hie spy, hie !"^ 

Tailor. Johnson explains the following words of Puck in 
''A Midsummer-Night's Dream" (ii. i) thus: 

"The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale, 
Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me ; 
Then slip I from her bum, down topples she, 
And ' tailor' cries, and falls into a cough." 

" The custom of crying tailor at a sudden fall backwards, 
I think I remember to have observed. He that slips beside 
his chair, falls as a tailor squats upon his board." Mr. Dyce,^ 
however, adds, " it may be doubted if this explains the 
text." 

Tilly-vally. An exclamation of contempt, the etymology 
of which is uncertain. According to Douce it is a hunting 
phrase borrowed from the French. Singer says it is equiva- 
lent io fiddle-faddle. It occurs in "Twelfth Night" (ii. 3), 
being used by Sir Toby: "Am not I consanguineous? am 
I not of her blood ? Tilly-vally, lady !" 

In " 2 Henry IV." (ii. 4), the Hostess corrupts it to tilly- 
fally: " Tilly-fally, Sir John, ne'er tell me: your ancient 
swaggerer comes not in my doors." 

As a further illustration of the use of this word. Singer 
quotes a conversation between Sir Thomas More and his 
wife, given in Roper's Life : " Is not this house, quoth he, as 
nigh heaven as my own ? To whom she, after her accus- 
tomed homely fashion, not liking such talk, answered, Tylle- 
valle, Tylle-valle." 

Wcstivard, ho. This was one of the exclamations of the 

■ Dyce's " Glossary," p. 402. ' Ibid., vol. vi. p. 45. ' Ibid., p. 43. 



532 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



watermen who plied on the Thames, and is used by Viola in 
"Twelfth Night" (iii. i). Dyce ' quotes from Peel's "Ed- 
ward I." to illustrate the use of this word : 

" Queen Elinor. Ay, good woman, conduct me to the court, 
That there I may bewail my sinful life. 
And call to God to save my wretched soul. 

\^A cry of ' Westward, ho P 
Woman, what noise is this I hear.? 

Potter's Wife. An like your grace, it is the watermen that call for 
passengers to go westward now." 

Dekker took the exclamation " Westward, ho !" for the 
title of a comedy; and Jonson, Chapman, and Marston 
adopted that of " Eastward, ho !" for one jointly written by 
them a few years afterwards. 

Fools. Mr. Douce, in his essay " On the Clowns and Fools 
of Shakespeare," has made a ninefold division of English 
fools, according to quality or place of employment, as the 
domestic fool, the city or corporation fool, the tavern fool, 
the fool of the mysteries and moralities. The last is gen- 
erally called the " vice," and is the original of the stage 
clowns so common among the dramatists of the time of 
Elizabeth, and who embody so much of the wit of Shake- 
speare. 

A very palpable distinction is that which distinguishes 
between such creatures as were chosen to excite to laughter 
from some deformity of mind or body, and such as were 
chosen for a certain alertness of mind and power of repartee 
— or, briefly, butts and wits. The dress of the regular court 
fool of the middle ages was not altogether a rigid uniform, 
but seems to have changed from time to time. The head 
was shaved, the coat was motley, and the breeches tight, with, 
generally, one leg different in color from the other. The 
head was covered with a garment resembling a monk's cowl, 
which fell over the breast and shoulders, and often bore asses' 
ears, and was crested with a coxcomb, while bells hung from 
various parts of the attire. The fool's bauble was a short 

* " Glossary," p. 497 ; see Nares's " Glossary,'' vol. ii. p. 952. 



MISCELLANEOUS CUSTOMS. 533 

staff bearing a ridiculous head, to which was sometimes at- 
tached an inflated bladder, by which sham castigations were 
inflicted ; a long petticoat was also occasionally worn, but 
seems to have belonged rather to the idiots than the wits. 
The fool's business was to amuse his master, to excite his 
laughter by sharp contrast, to prevent the over-oppression of 
state affairs, and, in harmony with a well-known physiologi- 
cal precept, by his liveliness at meals to assist his lord's di- 
gestion.' 

The custom of shaving and nicking the head of a fool 
is very old. There is a penalty of ten shillings, in one of 
Alfred's Ecclesiastical Laws, if one opprobriously shave a 
common man like a fool ; and Malone cites a passage from 
"The Choice of Change," etc., by S. R. Gent, 4to, 1598 — 
"Three things used by monks, which provoke other men to 
laugh at their follies: i. They are shaven and notched on 
the head like fooles." 

In the " Comedy of Errors" (v. i), the servant says: 

" My master preaches patience to him, and the while 
His man with scissors nicks him hke a fool." 

Forfeits. In order to enforce some kind of regularity in 
barbers' shops, which were once places of great resort for the 
idle, certain laws were usually made, the breaking of which 
was to be punished by forfeits. Rules of this kind, however, 
were as often laughed at as obeyed. So, in " Measure for 

Measure" (v. 1) : 

" laws for all faults, 
But faults so countenanc'd, that the strong statutes 
Stand like the forfeits in a barber's shop, 
As much in mock as mark. 

GaDibling. It was once customary for a person when 
going abroad " to put out " a sum of money on condition of 
receiving good interest for it on his return home ; if he never 
returned the deposit was forfeited, tiencc such a one was 

' " Encyclopaedia Britannica," 1879, vol. ix. p. 366 ; see Doran's " His- 
tory of Court Fools," 1858. 



534 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

called '' a putter-out." It is to this practice that reference 
is made in the following passage (" The Tempest," iii. 3) : 

" or that there were such men 
Whose heads stood in their breasts ? which now we find 
Each putter-out of five for one will bring us 
Good warrant of." 

Malone quotes from Moryson's "Itinerary" (1617, pt. 1. 
p. 198): "This custom of giving out money upon these ad- 
ventures was first used in court and noblemen ;" a practice 
which "banker-outs, stage -players, and men of base con- 
dition had drawn into contempt," by undertaking journeys 
merely for gain upon their return. In Ben Jonson's "Ev- 
ery Man Out of His Humour" (ii. 3) the custom is thus 
alluded to : "I do intend, this year of jubilee coming on, to 
travel ; and because I will not altogether go upon expence, 
I am determined to put forth some five thousand pound, to 
be paid me five for one, upon the return of my wife, myself, 
and my dog, from the Turk's court at Constantinople. If all, 
or either of us, miscarry in the journey, 'tis gone; if we be 
successful, why then there will be five and twenty thousand 
pound to entertain time with." 

Garters. It was the regular amorous etiquette in the reign 
of Elizabeth,' " for a man, professing himself deeply in love, 
to assume certain outward marks of negligence in his dress, 
as if too much occupied by his passion to attend to such 
trifles, or driven by despondency to a forgetfulness of all out- 
ward appearance." His " garters, in particular, were not to 
be tied up." In "As You Like It" (iii. 2), this custom is 
described by Rosalind, who tells Orlando : " There is none 
of my uncle's marks upon you ; he taught me how to know 
a man in love ; . . . . your hose should be ungarter'd, your 
bonnet unhanded, your sleeve unbuttoned, your shoe untied, 
and every thing about you demonstrating a careless desola- 
tion." Another fashion which seems to have been common 
among the beaux of Queen Elizabeth's reign, was that of 

' Nares's " Glossary," vol. i. p. 350. 



MISCELLANEOUS CUSTOMS. 505 

wearing garters across about the knees, an allusion to which 
we find in "Twelfth Night" (ii. 5), in the letter which Mal- 
volio reads : " Remember who commended thy yellow stock- 
i«ngs, and wished to see thee ever cross-gartered." Douce 
quotes from the old comedy of " The Two Angrie Women 
of Abingdon" (1599), where a servingman is thus described : 

" Hee's a fine neate fellow, 
A spruce slave, I warrant ye, he'ele have 
His cruell garters crosse about the knee." 

In days gone by, when garters were worn in sight, the 
upper classes wore very expensive ones, but the lower orders 
worsted galloon ones. Prince Henry calls Poins (" i Henry 
IV.," ii. 4) a " caddis garter," meaning a man of mean rank. 

Gaudy Days. Feast-days in the colleges of our univer- 
sities are so called, as they were formerly at the inns-of- 
court. In "Antony and Cleopatra" (iii. 13), Antony says: 

"come, 
Let's have one other gaudy night : call to me 
All my sad captains ; fill our bowls once more ; 
Let's mock the midnight bell." 

They were so called, says Blount, " from gaudiinn, because, 
to say truth, they are days of joy, as bringing good cheer to 
the hungry students." 

Glove. As an article of dress the glove held a conspicuous 
place in many of our old customs and ceremonies. Thus, it 
was often worn in the hat as a favor, and as a mark to be 
challenged by an enemy, as is illustrated by the following 
dialogue in " Henry V." (iv. i): 

" King Henry. Give me any gage of thine, and I will wear it in my 
bonnet : then, if ever thou darest acknowledge it, I will make it my 
quarrel. 

Williams. Here's my glove : give me another of thine. 

King Henry. There. 

Williams. This will I also wear in my cap : if ever thou come to me 
and say, after to-morrow, 'This is my glove,' by this hand, I will take 
thee a box on the ear. 

King Henry. If ever I live to see it, I will challenge it. 

Williams. Thou darest as well be hanged." 



I 



536 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

Again, in " Troilus and Cressida" (v. 2), Dio.medes, taking the 
glove from Cressida, says : 

" To-morrow will I wear it on my helm, 
And grieve his spirit that dares not challenge it." 

And in " Richard II." (v. 3), Percy narrates how Prince Henry 

boasted that — 

" he would unto the stews, 
And from the common'st creature pluck a glove, 
And wear it as a favour ; and with that 
He would unhorse the lustiest challenger." H 

The glove was also worn in the hat as the memorial of a 
friend, and in the " Merchant of Venice" (iv. i), Portia, in her 
assumed character, asks Bassanio for his gloves, which she 
says she will wear for his sake : 

" Give me your gloves, I'll wear them for your sake." 

When the fashion of thus wearing gloves declined, " it fell 
into the hands of coxcombical and dissolute servants."* 
Thus Edgar, in "King Lear" (iii. 4), being asked by Lear 
what he had been, replies : " A serving-man, proud in heart 
and mind; that curled my hair; wore gloves in my cap." 

To throw the glove, as the signal of a challenge, is alluded 
to by Troilus (iv. 4), who tells Cressida : 

" For I will throw my glove to Death himself. 
That's there's no maculation in thy heart " ^Bi 

— the meaning being, says Johnson : " I will challenge Death 
himself in defence of thy fidelity." 

The glove then thrown down was popularly called " a 
gage," '^ from the French, signifying a pledge, and in " Richard 
II." (iv. i), it is so termed by Aumerle : 

' Nares's " Glossary," vol. i. p. 371. 

^ The verb " to gage," or " to pledge," occurs in " Merchant of 

Venice," i. i : 

"but my chief care 

Is, to come fairly off from the great debts 

Wherein my time, something too prodigal. 

Hath left me gaged." 

Cf. " I Henry IV.,'' i. 3. j 



MISCELLANEOUS CUSTOMS. 

" There is my gage, the manual seal of death, 
That marks thee out for hell." 



537 



In the same play it is also called " honor's pawn." Thus 
Bolingbroke (i. i) says to Mowbray: 

" Pale trembling coward, there I throw my gage, 
Disclaiming here the kindred of the king; 
And lay aside my high blood's royalty, 
Which fear, not reverence, makes thee to except. 
If guilty dread hath left thee so much strength 
As to take up mine honour's pawn, then stoop." 

And further on (iv. i), one of the lords employs the same 
phrase : 

" There is my honour's pawn ; 
Engage it to the trial, if thou dar'st." 

It is difficult to discover why the glove was recognized as 
the sign of defiance. Brand ' suggests that the custom of 
dropping or sending the glove, " as the signal of a challenge, 
may have been derived from the circumstance of its being 
the cover of the hand, and therefore put for the hand itself. 
The giving of the hand is well known to intimate that the 
person who does so will not deceive, but stand to his agree- 
ment. To shake hands upon it would not be very delicate in 
an agreement to fight, and, therefore, gloves may possibly 
have been deputed as substitutes." 

Again, the glove was often thrown down as a pledge, as 
in " Timon of Athens " (v. 4), where the senator says to 

Alcibiades : 

" Throw thy glove, 
Or any token of thine honour else, 
That thou wilt use the wars as thy redress, 
And not as our confusion." 

Whereupon Alcibiades answers : " Then there's my glove." 
In " King Lear " (v. 2), Albany thus speaks : 

"Thou art arm'd, Gloster : — let the trumpet sound : 
If none appear to prove, upon thy person. 



' " Pop. Antiq.," vol. ii. p. 127. 



538 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

Thy heinous, manifest, and many treasons, 

There is my pledge ; [ Throwing donni a glove] I'll prove it on thy 
heart." 

In " Troilus and Cressida " (iv. 5), Hector further alludes to 
this practice : 

" Your quondam wife swears still by Venus' glove : 
She's well, but bade me not commend her to you." 

Scented gloves were formerly given away as presents. 
In "Winter's Tale" the custom is referred to by Mopsa, 
who says to the Clown (iv. 4) : " Come, you promised me a 
tawdry lace, and a pair of sweet gloves ;" and Autolycus is 
introduced singing: 

" Gloves as sweet as damask roses." ^^^ 



■ In "Much Ado About Nothing" ( iii. 4), Hero says : 
" These gloves the count sent me ; they are an excellent 
perfume." Trinity College, Oxford, not ungrateful to its 
founder and his spouse, has many entries, after the date of 
1556, in the Bursar's books, "pro fumigatis chirothecis," for 
perfumed gloves. 

Kiss. In years past, a kiss was the recognized fee of a 
lady's partner, and as such is noticed in " Henry VIII." 

(i-4): 

" I were unmannerly to take you out, 
And not to kiss you." 

In " The Tempest " (i. 2) it is alluded to in Ariel's song: 

" Come unto these yellow sands, 

And then take hands : 
Court'sied when you have, and kiss'd, 

The wild waves whist. 
Foot it featly here and there. 
And, sweet sprites, the burthen bear." 

There is probably a veiled allusion to the same ceremony 
in " Winter's Tale " (iv. 4), where, at the dance of shep- 
herds and shepherdesses, the following dialogue occurs: 



MISCELLANEOUS CUSTOMS. 539 

" Clown. Come on, strike up ! 

Dorcas. Mopsa must be your mistress : marry, garlic, 
To mend her kissing with. 

Mopsa. Now, in good time ! 

Clowji. Not a word, a word ; we stand upon our manners. 
Come, strike up !" 

In an old treatise entitled the " Use and Abuse of Danc- 
ing and Minstrelsie" we read: 

" But some reply, what fools v/ill daunce, 
If that when daunce is doon. 
He may not have at ladyes lips, 
That which in daunce he doon." 

The practice of saluting ladies with a kiss was once very 
general, and in the " Merry Wives of Windsor " to kiss the 
hostess is indirectly spoken of as a common courtesy of the 
day. 

In " Romeo and Juliet " (i. 5) a further instance occurs, 
where Romeo kisses Juliet at Capulet's entertainment; 
and, in " Henry VIII." (i. 4), Lord Sands is represented as 
kissing Anne Bullen, next to whom he sits at supper. 

The celebrated "kissing comfits" were sugar-plums, once 
extensively used by fashionable persons to make the breath 
sweet. Falstaff, in the " Merry Wives of Windsor" (v. 5), 
when embracing Mrs. Ford, says: " Let it thunder to the 
tune of * Green Sleeves,' hail kissing comfits, and snow crin- 
goes." 

In " Measure for Measure " (iv. i, song) kisses are referred 
to as " seals of love." A Judas kiss was a kiss of treachery. 
Thus, in " 3 Henry VI." (v. 7), Gloster says: 

" so Judas kiss'd his master, 
And cried ' All hail !" when-as he meant all harm." 

Lace Songs. These were jingling rhymes, sung by young 
girls while engaged at their lace-pillows. A practice alluded 
to by the Duke in " Twelfth Night " (ii. 4) : 

" O, fellow, come, the song we had last night. — 
Mark it, Cesario; it is old and plain ; 
The spinsters and the knitters in the sun, 



540 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

And the free maids that weave their thread with bones 
Do use to chant it." 



Miss Baker, in her "Northamptonshire Glossary" (1854, 
vol. i. p. 378), says, " The movement of the bobbins is timed 
by the modulation of the tune, which excites them to regular- 
ity and cheerfulness ; and it is a pleasing sight to see them, in 
warm, sunny weather, seated outside their cottage doors, or 
seeking the shade of a neighboring tree; where, in cheerful 
groups, they unite in singing their rude and simple rhymes. 
The following is a specimen of one of these ditties, most 
descriptive of the occupation: 

" ' Nineteen long lines, bring over my down, 
The faster I work it, I'll shorten my score, 
But if I do play, it'll stick to a stay. 
So heigh ho! little fingers, and twank it away.' " 

Letters. The word Emmanuel was formerly prefixed, 
probably from feelings of piety, to letters and public deeds. 
So in " 2 Henry VI." (iv. 2) there is the following allusion 

to it : 

" Cade. What is thy name } 
Clerk. Emmanuel. 
Dick. They use to write it on the top of letters." 

Staunton says: "We can refer to one MS. alone, in the 
British Museum (Ad. MSS. 19, 400), which contains no less 
than fourteen private epistles headed ' Emanewell,' or 'Jesus 
Immanuel.' " 

Another superscription of a" letter in years gone by was 
" to the bosom " of a lady. Thus Hamlet (ii. 2) says in his 
letter to Ophelia : 

" In her excellent white bosom, these." 

And in the " Two Gentlemen of Verona " (iii. i), Proteus 

says : 

" Thy letters may be here, though thou art hence ; 
Which, being writ to me, shall be deliver'd 
Even in the milk-white bosom of thy love." 

This custom seems to have originated in the circumstance 
of women having a pocket in the forepart of their stays, in 



MISCELLANEOUS CUSTOMS. 



541 



which, according to Stecvens, " they carried not only love- 
letters and love-tokens, but even their money and materials 
for needlework." 

Livery. The phrase " sue my livery," which occurs in the 
following speech of Bolingbroke (" Richard II." ii. 3), 

" I am denied to sue my livery here, 
And yet my letters-patents give me leave ; 
My father's goods are all distrain'd.and sold, 
And these, and all, are all amiss employ'd," 

is thus explained by Malone : " On the death of every per- 
son who held by knight's service, the escheator of the court 
in which he died summoned a jury, who inquired what 
estate he died seized of, and of what age his next heir was. 
If he was under age, he became a ward of the king's ; but if 
he was found to be of full age, he then had a right to sue 
out a writ of ouster Ic main, that is, his livery, that the king's 
hand might be taken off, and the land delivered to him." 
York (" Richard II.," ii. i) also says : 

"If you do wrongfully seize Hereford's rights, 
Call in the letters-patents that he hath 
By his attorneys-general to sue 
His livery." 

Love-Day. This denoted a day of amity or reconciliation ; 
an expression which is used by Saturninus in " Titus An- 
dronicus " (i. 1) : 

" You are my guest, Lavinia, and your friends. — 
This day shall be a love-day, Tamora." 

Military Lore. Fleslnnent. This is a military term ; 
a young soldier being said to flesJi his sword the first time 
he draws blood with it. In "King Lear" (ii. 2), Oswald 
relates how Kent 

" in the fleshment of this dread e.xploit. 
Drew on me here again," 

upon which passage Singer (vol. ix. p. 377) has this note: 
" Fleshment, therefore, is here metaphorically applied to the 
first act which Kent, in his new capacity, had performed for his 



542 



FOI.K-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



master ; and, at the same time, in a sarcastic sense, as though 
he had esteemed it an heroic exploit to trip a man behind, 
who was actually falling." The phrase occurs again in " i 
Henry IV." (v. 4), where Prince Henry tells his brother: 

" Come, brother John, full bravely hast thou flesh'd 
Thy maiden sword." 

Sivcaring by the Sivord. According to Nares,' " the sin- 
gular mixture of religious and military fanaticism which 
arose from the Crusades gave rise to the custom of taking 
a solemn oath upon a sword. In a plain, unenriched sword, 
the separation between the blade and the hilt was usually 
a straight transverse bar, which, suggesting the idea of a 
cross, added to the devotion which every true knight felt for 
his favorite weapon, and evidently led to this practice." 
Hamlet makes Horatio swear that he will never divulge 
having seen the Ghost (i. 5) : 

" Never to speak of this that you have seen, 
Swear by my sword." 

In the " Winter's Tale " (ii. 3), Leonato says : 

" Swear by this sword 
Thou wilt perform my bidding." 

The cross of the sword is also mentioned to illustrate the 
true bearing of the oath. Hence, in " i Henry IV." (ii. 4), 
Falstaff says jestingly of Glendower, that he " swore the 
devil his true liegeman upon the cross of a Welsh hook."" 
On account of the practice of swearing by a sword, or, rath- 
er, by the cross or upper end of it, the name of jfcsiis was 
sometimes inscribed on the handle or some other part. 

Alining Ti'rvis. According to Mr. Collier, the phrase 
" truepenny " is a mining term current in the north of Eng- 
land, signifying a particular indication in the soil, of the 

' "Glossary," vol. ii. p. 858 ; see Dyce's "Glossary," p. 431. 

^ A Welsh hook was a sort of bill, hooked at the end, and with a 
long handle. See Dyce's " Glossary," p. 497 ; and Singer's " Shake- 
peare," vol. ix. p. 168. 



MISCELLANEOUS CUSTOMS. 543 

direction in which ere is to be found. Thus Hamlet (i. 5) 
says 

" Ah, ha, boy ! say'st thou so ? art thou there, truepenny ?" 

when making Horatio and MarceUus again swear that they 
will not divulge having seen the ghost. 

Patrons. The custom of clergymen praying for their 
patrons, in what is called the bidding prayer, seems alluded 
to by Kent in " King Lear" (i. i): 

" Royal Lear, 
Whom I have ever honour'd as my king, 
Lov'd as my father, as my master foUow'd, 
As my great patron thought on in my prayers." 

Sagittary. This was a monster, half man, half beast, de- 
scribed as a terrible archer; neighing like a horse, and with 
its eyes of fire striking men dead as if with lightning. In 
" Troilus and Cressida" (v. 5), Agamemnon says: 

"The dreadful Sagittary 
Appals our numbers." 

Hence any deadly shot was called a sagittary. In " Othello " 
(i. i) the barrack is so named from the figure of an archer 
over the door. 

Salad Days. Days of green youth and inexperience. 

Cleopatra says (i. 5) : 

'' My salad days. 
When I was green in judgment: — cold in blood." 

Salt. The salt of youth is that vigor and strong passion 
which then predominates. The term is several times used 
by Shakespeare for strong amorous passion. lago, in 
" Othello " (iii. 3), refers to it as " hot as monkeys, as salt as 
wolves in pride." In '' Measure for Measure " (v. i), the 
Duke calls Angelo's base passion his " salt imagination," 
because he supposed his victim to be Isabella, and not his 
betrothed wife, whom he was forced by the Duke to marry.' 

Salutations. God -den was used by our forefathers as 

' Brewer's " Dictionary of Phrase and Fable,'' p. 782. 



544 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



soon as noon was past, after which time " good-morrow " or 
" good-day " was esteemed improper ; the phrase " God ye 
good den " being a contraction of ^' God give you a good 
evening." This fully appears from the following passage in 
" Romeo and Juliet " (ii. 4) : 

" Nurse. God ye good morrow, gentlemen. 
Aleractio. God ye good den, fair gentlewoman." 

Upon being thus corrected, the Nurse asks," Is it good den?" 
to which Mercutio replies, " 'Tis no less, I tell you, for the 
bawdy hand of the dial is now upon the prick of noon." 

A further corruption of the same phrase was "God dig- 
you-den," as used by Costard in "Love's Labour's Lost" 
(iv. i): "God dig-you-den all!" Shakespeare uses it several 
times, as in " Titus Andronicus " (iv. 4), where the Clown 
says : " God and Saint Stephen give you good den ;" and in 
"King John" (i. i) we have "Good-den, Sir Richard!" 

Another old popular salutation was "good even and 
twenty" ("Merry Wives of Windsor," ii. i), equivalent to 
" twenty good-evenings." Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps quotes a 
similar phrase from Elliot's " Fruits of the French " (1593), 
" God night, and a thousand to everybody." 

We may also compare the phrase " good deed " in "Win- 
ter's Tale " (i. 2) — a species of asseveration, as " in very deed." 

Servants Customs. The old custom of the servants of 
great families taking an oath of fidelity on their entrance 
into office — as is still the case with those of the sovereign — 
is alluded to by Posthumus in " Cymbeline " (ii. 4), where, 
speaking of Imogen's servants, he says : 

" Her attendants are 
All sworn and honourable." ' 

Gold chains were formerly worn by persons of rank and 
dignity, and by rich merchants — a fashion which descend- 
ed to upper servants in great houses — and by stewards as 
badges of office. These chains were usually cleaned by be- 

^ See Percy's " Northumberland Household Book," p. 49. 



MISCELLANEOUS CUSTOMS. 



545 



ing rubbed with crumbs. Hence, in " Twelfth Night " (ii. 3), 
Sir Toby says to the Clown : 

" Go, sir, rub 3'our chain with crumbs." 

In days gone by, too, it was customary for the servants 
of the nobihty, particularly the gentleman-usher, to attend 
bare-headed. In the procession to the trial in "Henry 
VIII." (ii. 4), one of the persons enumerated is a gentleman- 
usher " bare-headed." On grand occasions, coachmen, also, 
drov'e bare-headed, a practice alluded to in Beaumont and 
Fletcher's " Woman-Hater " (iii. 2) : 

" Or a pleated lock, or a bareheaded coachman, 
This sits like a sign where great ladies are 
To be sold within." 

SJicriffs Post. At the doors of sheriffs were usually set 
up ornamental posts, on which royal and civic proclamations 
were fixed. So, in "Twelfth Night" (i. 5), Malvolio says: 
" He'll stand at your door like a sheriff's post." "A pair 
of mayors' posts," says Staunton, " arc still standing in Nor- 
wich, which, from the initials T. P., and the date 159-, are 
conjectured to have belonged to Thomas Pettys, who was 
mayor of that city in 1592." 

Shocing-Horn. This, from its convenient use in drawing 
on a tight shoe, was applied in a jocular metaphor to other 
subservient and tractable assistants. Thus Thersites, in 
"Troilus and Cressida " (v. i), in his railing mood gives this 
name to Menelaus, whom he calls " a thrifty shoeing-horn in 
a chain, hanging at his brother's [Agamemnon] leg." 

It was also employed as a contemptuous name for dan- 
glers on young women. 

In the same way " shoe-tye " became a characteristic name 
for a traveller, a term used by Shakespeare in " Measure for 
Measure " (iv. 3), " Master Forthright the tilter, and brave 
Master Shoe-tie, the great traveller."* 

A Solemn Shipper. In Shakespeare's day this was a phrase 
for a feast or banquet given on any important occasion, such 
as a birth, marriage, etc. Macbeth says (iii. i) : 

35 



546 FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 

" To-night we hold a solemn supper, sir, 
And I'll request your presence." 

Howel, in a letter to Sir T. Hawke, 1636, says: "I was 
invited yesternight to a solcmnc supper by B. J, [Ben Jonson], 
where you were deeply remembered." 

So, in " Romeo and Juliet " (i. 5), Tybalt says : 

" What ! dares the slave 
Come hither, cover'd with an antic face, 
To fleer and scorn at our solemnity ?" 

And in " All's Well that Ends Well " (ii. 3), the King, on" 
the conclusion of the contract between Helena and Ber- 
tram, says : 



" The solemn feast 
Shall more attend upon the coming space, 
Expecting absent friends." 



I 



Statute Caps. These were woollen caps enforced by Stat- 
ute 13 Elizabeth, which, says Strype, in his " Annals " (vol. ii. j 
p. 74), was " for continuance of making and wearing woollen 
caps in behalf of the trade of cappers; providing that all I 
above the age of six years (excepting the nobility and some | 
others) should on Sabbath-days and holy-days wear caps of 
Avool, knit thicked, and drest in England, upon penalty of ten 
groats." Thus, in " Love's Labour's Lost" (v. 2), Rosaline j 

says : 

" Well, better wits have worn plain statute-caps." 

Jonson considered that the statute caps alluded to were 
those worn by the members of the universities. 

TJicatrical Lore. At the conclusion of a play, or of the 
epilogue, it was formerly customary for the actors to kneel 
down on the stage, and pray for the sovereign, nobility, 
clergy, and sometimes for the commons. So, in the epilogue 
to "2 Henry IV.," the dancer says : " My tongue is weary; 
Avhen my legs are too, I will bid you good night ; and so 
kneel down before yoir: — but, indeed, to pray for the queen." 
Collier, in his " History of English Dramatic Poetry" (vol. 
iii. p. 445), tells us that this practice continued in the com- 
mencement of the 17th century. 

I 
i 



MISCELLANEOUS CUSTOMS. 



547 



Tournaments. In " Coriolanus" (ii. i) Shakespeare attrib- 
utes some of the customs of his own times to a people who 
were wholly unacquainted with them. In the following pas- 
sage we ha\-e an exact description of what occurred at tilt- 
ings and tournaments when a combatant had distinguished 

himself: 

" Matrons flung gloves, 
Ladies and maids their scarfs and handkerchers, 
Upon him as he pass'd : the nobles bended, 
As to Jove's statue ; and the commons made 
A shower and thunder with their caps and shouts : 
never saw the like.'' ' 

An allusion to the mock tournaments, in which the com- 
batants were armed with rushes in place of spears, is used 
in " Othello " (v. 2) : 

" Man but a rush against Othcllo'o breast." 

Trumpet. In olden times it was the fashion for persons 
of distinction, wdien visiting, to be accompanied by a trum- 
peter, who announced their approach by a flourish of his 
trumpet. It is to this custom, Staunton" thinks, that Lo- 
renzo refers in the ''Merchant of Venice " (v. i), where he 
tells Portia : 

'• Your husband is at hand ; I hear his trumpet." 

War-Crv. " God and Saint George T' — the common cry 
of the English soldier when he charged the enemy. " Rich- 
ard III." (v. 3). The author of the " Old Arte of Warre," 
printed in the latter end of Queen Elizabeth's reign, formally 
enjoins the use of this cry among his military laws (p. 84): 
" Item. That all souldiers entring into battaile, assaulte, 
skirmishe, or other faction of armes, shall have for their 
common cry-word, ' Saint George, forward, or upon them, 
Saint George!' whereby the souldier is much comforted to 
minde the ancient valour of England, which with that name 
has been so often victorious ; and therefore he who upon 

' See Singer's " Shakespeare," vol. vii. p. 350. 
' " Shakespeare,"' 1864, vol. i. p. 61. 



548 



FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 



any sinister zeale shall maliciously omit so fortunate a name, 
shall be severely punished for his obstinate, erroneous heart 
and perverse mind." 

" Havoc .^" To cry " havoc " appears to have been a signal 
for indiscriminate slaughter. The expression occurs in 
" King John " (ii. i) : " Cry havoc, kings !" In " Coriolanus " 
Menenius says (iii. i): 

" Do not cry havoc, where you should but hunt 
With modest warrant." 

And in "Julius Caesar" (iii. i): 

" Cry ' Havoc !' and let slip the dogs of war." 

" Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill him .^" This was the ancient cry 
of the English troops when they charged the enemy. It 
occurs where the conspirators kill Coriolanus (v. 6). 

Lcct-Alc. This was the dinner provided for the jury and 
customary tenants at the court-leet of a manor, or " view of 
frank-pledge," formerly held once or twice a year, before the 
steward of the leet.' To this court Shakespeare alludes in 
the " Taming of the Shrew " (i. 2), where the servant tells 
Sly that in his dream he would " rail upon the hostess of the 
house," and threaten to " present her at the leet." 

Aubrey, in his MS. History of Wiltshire, 1678, tells us, too, 
how " in the Easter holidays was the Clerk's ale for his pri- 
vate benefit, and the solace of the neighbourhood." 

1 See page 312. 



INDEX. 



Aconite, its deadly poison, 201. 

Adonis horti, 469. 

Agate, applied to a diminutive person, 

12, 390. 
Ague, spider a cure for, 258. 
Air, drizzling dew, 90. 
All hid, all hid, children's game, 395. 
All-Saints' Day, 326. 
All-Souls' Day, 327. 
Almanacs, 505. 
Alms-drink, 527. 

Alphabet, called Christ-cross-row, 50S. 
Amaimon, name of evil spirit, 60. 
Amulets, 505. 

Anemone, legend relating to, 203. 
Ant, 250. 

Antic, a dance, 424. 
Ape, term of contempt or endearment, 

161 ; leading of, in hell, 161. 
Apostle-spoons, 336, 337. 
Apple, 203, 204. 

Apple-John, name of apple, 204. 
Apple-squire, 204, note. 
Apricock or apricot, 20S. 
Archery, 394. 

Ariel, faiiy so called, 83, 162. 
Aroint thee, meaning of, 41. 
Aspen, supplied wood of Cross, 20S ; 

trembling of, 209. 
Ass, 161. 
Astrology, 80-82. 
Audry's (St.) Day, 324 ; lace, 325. 

Baby-in-the-eye, 483. 

Bachelor's buttons, 209. 

l^ackgammon, 396. 

Badge of Poverty, 52i.'\ 

Baffle, old punishment, '434. 

Bagatelle, 422. 

Bakie bird, name of bat, 163. 

Balm, curative properties of, 210 j as 

oil of consecration, 211. 
Bandy, term at tennis, 420. 
Barbason, evil spirit, 60. 
Barbers' forfeits, 533. 
Barefoot, dancing, 354. 
Barla-breikis, 396. 



Bailey-break, 396. 

Barley broth, 211. 

Barnacle goose, 97. 

Bartholomew's (St.) Day, 321. 

Bartholomew Fair, 321 ; pigs, 321. 

]3ase, old game, 397. 

Basilisk, 174. 

Basins, burning, held before the eyes, 

433- 

Bat, superstitions relating to, 162. 

Bat-fowling, 398. 

liate, term in falconry, 125, note. 

Bay-tree, ominous, 211. 

Bear, folk-lore of, 163 ; caught by mir- 
rors, 164 ; baiting, 164. 

Beard, characteristic of a witch, 29 ; 
customs associated with, 4S6 ; muti- 
lation of, considered an outrage, 486 ; 
stroking of, preparatory to a favor, 
486 ; swearing by, 4S7 ; shape of, 487. 

Beauty, characteristic of fairies, 10. 

Bedfellow, custom of having, 521. 

Beef, supposed to impair intellect, 496. 

Beetle, old name for, 100. 

Belemite, 92. 

Bell, tolling of, at funerals, 3S1 ; curfew, 
85,521. 

lielly-bJind, old game, 409. 

ISergomask, dance, 424. 

I'etrothing customs, 342-350. 

Bid the base, 398. 

Bilboes, punishment, 435. 

Billiards, 399. 

Bird-batting, 39S, note. 

Birding, term of hawking, 12S. 

Birth and baptism, 332-341. 

Biting of thumb, as an insult, 492. 

Bitter-sweeting, apple so called, 205. 

Blackbird, 100. 

Black Monday, 302, 303. 

Bleeding, custom of, in spring, 266; 
cures for, 264, 265. 

Blessed thistle, 222. 

Blindness, 266. 

Blindworm, 255. 

Blister, superstition relating to, 266. 

Blood, thickened bv emotional influ- 



550 



INDEX. 



ences, 477 ; phrases connected with, 

476, 477- 
Blood-drinking sighs, 289. 
Llood-sncl'iei", name for leech, 2S1. 
Blue-bottle, insect so called, 250. 
Boar-hunting, 166. 
Body, trembling of, 475. 
Boiling to death, old punishment, 433. 
Bone-ace, old game, 399. 
Bone-ache, 267. 

Boots, to give the, harvest custom, 322. 
Bots, 251. 

Brain, notions relating to, 478. 
Brain-pan, name for skull, 479. 
Brand, old punishment, 436. 
Brawl, old dance, 425. 
Breech, term for whipping, 436. 
Breese, 252. 
Bridal-bed, blessing of, 355 ; decorating 

with flowers, 355. 
Bridal couple serenaded, 357. 
Bride-ale, 312. 
Bride's veil, 353 ; hair loose at wedding 

ceremony, 352. 
Brine, soaking in, old punishment, 434. 
Bruise, remedies for, 268. 
Bubukle, name for pimple, 268. 
Bull-baiting, 168. 
Bullfinch, loi, note. 
Bully-rook, term of reproach, 153. 
Burn, remedy for, 268. 
Buzzard, 100. 
By-drinkings, 527. 

Cakes and ale at festivals, 331. 

Camomile, 212. 

Canary, old dance, 425. 

Candles of the night, stars so called, 83. 

Carbuncle, supernatural qualities of, 

390. 
Cards, playing, 401. 
Carnations, 220. 

Carp, most cunning of fishes, 497. 
Carraways, 207. 
Castor and Pollux, meteors so called, 

83- . . 
Cat, familiar of witches, 1 68-1 71 ; said 

to have nine lives, 172; used as a 

term of contempt, 173. 
Cataract, 268, 269. 
Cattle, destroyed by witches, 39. 
Ceremonies, omens from sacritices, 506. 
Chaffinch, 100. 

Challenge, glove sent as a, 537. 
Chameleon, said to feed on air, 173 ; 

changes color, 174. 
Changelings, 11, 24, 333, 334. 
Charity, St., 320. 
Charles's wain. So. 
Charms, 506. 



Check, term in hawking, 123, 

Cherry-pit, old game, 401. 

Cherry-tree, in conneciiou with cuckoo- 
rhyme, III. 

Chess, 402. 

Chester mysteries, 31 1. 

Chewet, meaning of term, loi. 

Chilblains, 269. 

Children of the revels, 297. 

Christ-cross-row, name for alphabet, 
508. 

Christening day, 338. 

Christenings, entertainments at, 33S. 

Christmas, customs at, 329 ; carol, 329 ; 
eve, cock-crow on, 103 ; gambol, 329; 
wassail-bowl at, 330 ; candle, 330; 
mummers, 331; nutmeg, gift at, 233. 

Christom cliild, 340. 

Chrysolite, supernatural virtues of, 391. 

Cicely, St., 321, note. 

Cinders of the elements, stars so called, 

83. 

Cinque-pace, old dance, 425. 

Clacking at Easter, 302. 

Clare's (St.) fire, meteor so called, 83. 

Closing eye of the dead, 372. 

Clouds, weather-lore of, 96. 

Cloud-in-the-face, term applied to a 
horse, 191. 

Clover-fiovvers, 212. 

Cobwebs, used for stanching blood, 265. 

Cock, crows on Christmas Eve, 103 ; 
spirits disappear at cock-crow, 48. 

Cock-a-hoop, applied to a reckless per- 
son, 107. 

Cockatrice, superstitions relating to, 
I74> 175; applied to a loose woman, 

175- 
Cock-boat, 108, note. 
Cock-chafer, old name for, 100. 
Cock-fighting, 105. 
Cockle, badge of pilgrims, 498. 
Cock-light, 160. 
Cock's-body, 106. 

Cock-shut time, name for twilight, 159. 
Cock's-passion, 106. 
Coddling, apple so called, 206. 
Cold palsies, 2S4. 

Colt, its metaphorical use, 175 ; pixey, 6. 
Columbine, a thankless flower, 212. 
Comets, considered ominous, 89. 
Cony-catch, term for cheating, 196. 
Cooling-card, 415. 
Coranto, old dance, 426. 
Cormorant, 108. 

Corpse, unlucky to keep on board, 370. 
Cotswold games, 316. 
Couch-grass, 243. 
" Coventry Mysteries," 313, 
Crab, name of apple, 205. 



INDEX. 



551 



Grants, name for garlands, 374. 

Cricket, a good omen; 251; unluckv, 
516. 

Crispin's (St.) Day, 325. 

Crocodile, tears of, 176; said to be de- 
ceitful, 176. 

Cross, wood of, 20S. 

Cross-bow, shooting with, 17S. 

Cross-road, ghosts of suicides haunt, 3S2. 

Crow, bird of ill-omen, 108. 

Crow-flowers, 212. 

Crowfoot, 213. 

Crow-keeper, 109. 

Crown, burning, placed on criminals, 

436, 437- 
Cry, applied to pack of hounds, 179. 
Cry Budget, a watchword, 529. 
Crystal, old terna for the eye, 483. 
Cuckold, 113. 
Cuckoo, superstitions connected with, 

110-113. 
Cuckoo-buds, 213. 
Cuckoo-flowers, 213. 
Cuerpo-Santo, meteor so called, 84. 
Curfew-bell, 85. 
Curtal dog, 183. 
Cut, name for a horse, 192. 
Cuttle, a foul-mouthed person so called, 

49S. 
Cypress, 213, 214. 

Daffodil, weather-lore of, 214. 

Dances, 424-432. 

Dancing, ascribed to fairies, 18. 

Dark-house, term for a mad-house, 50, 
278. 

Darnel, 215. 

Date, 215. 

David's (St.) Day, 226, 303. 

Dead, burying of, in their ordinary dress, 
375, 376; feasts of the, 378; tombs 
of, ornamented, 377 : cannot die on 
pigeons' feathers, 367 ; closing eyes 
of, 372 ; decorated with flowers, 373. 

Dead men's fingers, orchis so called, 
227. 

Death and burial customs, 362-385. 

Death, prophecy at point of, 362 ; high 
spirits presage impending, 363 ; warn- 
ings at time of, 364, 365 ; watch, 516 ; 
delayed until ebb of tide, 370; devil 
seizes soul at, 365. 

Death's-head rings, 388. 

Deer, hunting customs relating to, 177- 
181; shooting with cross-bow, 178; 
tears of, 180. 

Deformed children, 78. 

Deformity, superstitions connected with, 
269, 270. 

Demoniacal possession, 475. 



Demonology, 52-61. 

Dennis, St., patron saint of France, 
3-0. 

Devil, cloven foot of, 57. 

Devil's Dyke, myth of, 189. 

Dew, its supposed virtues, 90 ; curious 
notions respecting, 63. 

Dice, 402. 

Disedge, term in falconry, 127. 

Divine right of kings, 512. 

Dog, its howl ominous, 181, 516; rides 
with ghosts, 49 ; days, 183, 319 ; kill- 
er, 183. 

Domestic fowl, 113. 

Dove, customs associated with, 113-115 ; 
Mahomet's, 115 ; of Venus, 115. 

Dr.agon, type of evil, 1S4; draws char- 
iot of night, 1S4; folk-lore of, 185. 

Dreams, prognostics of good and evil, 
508 ; malicious spirits torment their 
victims in, 509. 

Dribble, term in archery, 411. 

Drowning, dangerous to save a person 
from, 271. 

Duck, to swim like a, 116. 

Duck-hunting, 115. 

Duels, 509. 

Dun is in the mire, Christmas game, 403. 

Dwarf elder, superstition connected 
with, 216. 

Eagle, gazes on the sun, 116 ; its great 

age, 117; bird of good omen, 118; 

selected for Roman standard, 118. 
Ear, tingling of, 4S0 ; biting of, e.xpres- 

sion of endearment, 481 ; want of, for 

music, 4S1. 
Earnest-money, 528. 
Earthquakes, cause of, 93 ; ominous, 

93. 516. 
Easter morning, dancing of sun on, 63 ; 

clacking at, 302 ; new clothes worn 

on, 302 ; Mondav, 302, 303. 
Ebb of tide, death delayed until, 370. 
Ebony, emblem of darkness, 215. 
Eclipses, savage notions respecting, 71 ; 

unlucky, 72, 516 ; a bad omen, 65, 
Eels, roused by thunder, 92. 
Eggs in moonshine, 78 ; witches sail 

^i". 35- 

Eisel, name for vinegar, 292. 

Elberich, 14. 

Elbow, itching of, 481. 

Elder, tree on which Judas hanged him- 
self, 216 ; plant of bad omen, 2i6. 

Elements, the four, 475. 

Elephant, said to have no joints, 186; 
cajJturc of, 1S6. 

Elf-fire, 87, note ; elf-locks, 190. 

Elfin-grey, 17. 



552 



INDEX. 



Elmo's (St.) stars, 84. 

Elves, 9. 

Embossed, applied to deer, 179. 

Emmew, a term in falconry, 128. 

Engine, name for the rack, 439. 

Epilepsy, 271, 283. 

Equinox, weather-lore of, 93. 

Eringoes, 217. 

Etheldreda's (St.) Day, 324. 

Evil spirits, assume various forms, 53 ; 
a dead friend, 55. 

Exclamations, 529-531. 

Exorcism of spirits, 44. 

Eyas-musket, name for a young spar- 
row-hawk, 154. 

Eye, closing of, at death, 372 ; bitten, 
335 ; blueness of, 4S2 ; the evil, 335 
482. 

Face, to play the hypocrite, 484. 

Fading, a dance, 426. 

P'airies, assume various forms, 12 ; at- 
tentive to youthful dead, 22 ; beauty 
of, 10; fond of cleanliness, 18; di- 
minutiveness of, 12; dislike irrelig- 
ious people, 18; dress of, 17; enrich 
their favorites, 21 ; exchange chil- 
dren, 24 ; expeditious in their ac- 
tions, 21 ; fatal to speak to, 21 ; fond 
of dancing and music, 17, 18 ; haunts 
of, 15; immortality of, 11 ; kind to 
mortals, 20 ; malignant, 22 ; mischiev- 
ous, 23 ; perpetual youth of, 11 ; van- 
ish at will, 12. 

Fairy revels, 18. 

Fairy-rings, 15, 16, 232. 

Falcon-gentle, species of hawk, 15S. 

Falling-sickness, 271. 

Fast and loose, a cheating game, 403. 

Feet, stumbling of, unlucky, 454. 

Fencing, 404. 

Fennel, an inflammatory berb, 217. 

Fern-seed, renders invisible, 217, 218. 

Feiix follcls, name for will-o'-the-wisp, 
88. 

Fever, spider a cure for, 258. 

Fiery dragon, 85. 

Fiery Trigon, 79. 

Fig, phrases connected with, 218, 219. 

Filliping the toad, game of boys, 406. 

Finch-egg, loi. 

Finger, itching of, 482. 

Finger-stone, 92. 

Fire-drake, 84, 85. 

Fistula, 271, 272. 

Fit, 272, 273. 

Fitchew, 196. 

Flagellation, treatment for persons pos- 
sessed, 56. 

Flap-dragon, 406. 



Flap-jacks, name for pancakes, 299. 
Flaws, sudden gusts of wind, 95. 
Fleas, loach said to breed, 499. 
Fleshment, military term, 541. 
Fleur-de-lys, 219. 
Flibbertigibbet, a fiend, name also for 

ignis fatmis, 6, 61, 85, 269. 
Flitter-mouse, term for the bat, 163. 
Flower-de-luce, 219. 
Flowers, carried on a maiden's coffin, 

374; for decorating corpses, 374; on 

graves, 373 ; at weddings, 355. 
Flowering Sunday, 374. 
Fly, form of an evil spirit, 54. 
Folk-medicine, 264-295. 
Fools, 532. 
Foot-ball, 407. 

Forelooked, term for evil eye, 335 
P^orfeits, 533. 
Fortune-tellers, 510. 
P"ox, hunting of, 187 ; a weapon so called 

186. 
Frateretto, fiend so called, 61. 
Friar's lantern, name for ignis fatints, 

87, note. 
Frogs used for divination, 252. 
Fullams, false dice, 403. 
Funeral rites, supposed necessity for, 

46, 3S2. 

Gadfly, 252. 

Gage, a glove so called, 536, note. 

Gall of goat, used by witches, 187. 

Galliard, dance, 425, note. 

Gambling, 533. 

Game laws, 180. 

Garters, 534. 

Gaudy days, 535. 

George (St.) and dragon, myth of, 1S4. 

George's (St.) Day, 304. 

Giants, belief in, 512. 

Gib cat, 173. 

Gillyflower, 221. 

Gimmal-ring, 347. 

Gleek, old game, 408. 

Glove, worn as a favor, 536 ; memorial 
of a friend, 536; signal of a chal- 
lenge, 536; a pledge, 537; scented, 
538. 

Glow-worm, superstition relating to, 
138. 

Goat, superstition relating to, 187. 

'■ God save the mark," exclamation, 529. 

God's tokens, plague-spots, 2S5. 

Gold, melted, poured down the throat, 
369 ; chains, worn by persons of rank, 
544; medicinal virtues of, 273. 

Golden-russeting, name of an apple, 
206. 

Goldfinch, 119. 



\ 



INDEX. 



553 



Good Friday, 301. 

Good Lubber, name of a spirit, 8. 

Good year, coiruption oi goiiji-i e, 274. 

Goose, emblem of cowardice, 119; 
terms connected with, 118, 119. 

Gossamer, notions relating to, 259. 

Gossip's bowl, 205. 

Gourds, false dice, 402. 

Gout, 2S8. 

Grand liquor, the aicriiin potabile of al- 
chemists, 274. 

Grave, position of, 3S2 ; yards, haunted 
by spectres, 38 1, 382. 

Gudgeon, 49S. 

Guinea-hen, 1 13. 

Gull, term for a fool, 120 ; used for a 
trick or imposition, 120. 

Gull-catcher, applied to sharpers, 120 ; 
groper, 120. 

Gurnet, term of reproach, 499. 

Ilabundia, Mab, perhaps, a contraction 
of, 4. 

Hack, punishment of knight, 434. 

Hag-seed, 40. 

Haggard, term in hawking, 122. 

Hair, antipathy to red and yellow, 485 ; 
much, denotes want of intellect, 462, 
488 ; stands on end through fear, 
4SS ; turns white through sorrow and 
fear, 489 ; used metaphorically, 490 ; 
bride's, dishevelled at wedding cere- 
mony, 352, 353. 

Halcyon days, 131. 

Halidom, meaning of, 529. 

Hallowmas, 326. 

Hand, palmistry of, 490 ; worms bred 
in fingers of idle servants, 491 ; terms 
associated with, 491, 492. 

Hare, a melancholy animal, 187 ; prov- 
erb relating to, 462. 

Harebell, 221. 

Hare-lip, supposed to be work of fairy, 
492. 

Harrie-racket, old game, 396. 

Hart royal, 178. 

Havoc, to cry, 514. 

Hawk, catching game with, 121-126 ; to 
seel a, 127; training of, 126; to imp 
a, 128. 

Hay, old dance, 427 ; exclamation, 

529- 
Head, shape of, 493. 
Heart, scat of understanding, 493, 494 ; 

courage, 494; death from broken, 493. 
Heart's-ease, nickname of, 227 ; used 

for love-philtres, 227. 
Hecate, 35. 
Hedgehog, said to suck udders of cows, 

188; familiar of witches, 1S9; legends 



connected with, 18S, 1S9 ; a term of 
reproach, 189. 

Helen's (St.) fire, meteor so called, 83. 

Helme's (St.) fire, 83. 

Hemlock, its poisonous character, 221 ; 
supposed to be death-drink of Greeks, 
221 ; nickname for, 223. 

Henbane, 223. 

Herb of Grace, 221, 222. 

Herm's (St.) fire, meteor, 83. 

Heme's oak, 233, 234. 

Heron, used in hawking, 129. 

Hid, or hide fox, game so called, 408. 

High spirits a bad omen, 363. 

Hippopotamus, 504. 

Hob-and-his-lanthorn, 87, note. 

Hobany's lanthorn, 87, note. 

Hobbididance, evil spirit so called, 61. 

Hobgoblin, 7. 

Hobby-horse, character in morris-dance, 
309 ; applied to a loose woman, 310. 

Hock cart, at harvest-home, 323. 

Hold, term in fighting, 530. 

Holy-Cross Day, 324. 

Holyrood Day, 324. 

Holy thistle, 222. 

Honey-dew, 91. 

Honey-stalks, name for clover-flowers, 
212. 

Hoodman-blind, 40S, 409. 

Horn-mad, 278. 

Horses, fairies play pranks with, 190; 
witches harass, 190 ; terms connected 
with, 191 ; forehorse of a team deco- 
rated, 192 ; hair, notion respecting, 
190 ; racing, 409. 

Hum-buz, name for cockchafer, 100. 

Hunting customs, 178, 179. 

Hunt's-up, morning song to a newly- 
married couple, 179, 357. 

Hysteria, 275. 

Idiots, said to be fairies' children, 334. 
Imp, to, term in falconry, 128. 
Incubi, class of devils, 78. 
Infection, notions respecting, 276. 
Iniquity, character in old miracle-plays, 

3'4- 
Insane root. 223. 

Insanity, infiuer.ced by moon, 73, 277. 
Irreligious persons, fairies dislike, 18. 
Ivy, hung at door of a vintner, 223. 

Jack-a-lantcrn, 87. 

Jack-a-Lent, 299. 

Jackdaw, 102. 

Jacket-a-wad, 87, note. 

Jane .Shore, 27,37. 

Jaundice, spider a cure for, 25S. 

Jay, applied to loose woman, 130. 



554 



INDEX. 



Jesses, trappings of hawks, 126. 

Jesus, inscribed on letters, 540. 

Jews, torturing of, 474. 

Jew's eye, 473. 

Jig, an old dance, 427. 

Joan of Ave, 26. 

Joan-in-the-wad, 87, note. 

John (St.) Baptist's night, 319. 

John's (St.) wort, divination by, 31S. 

Judas, hanged himself on an elder, 216; 

kiss, 539. 
Justice Jar vis, old pastime, 418. 

Kecksies, stalks of hemlock, 224. 

Kestrel, applied to hawk, 130. 

Key-cold, meaning of, 265. 

Kid-fox, game, 408. 

Kingfisher, weather-lore of, 131 j hung 
up in cottages, 131. 

Kings, supernatural authority of, 517. 

King's evil, 279. 

Kiss, at betrothal, 34G ; at marriage 
ceremony, 351 ; fee of lady's partner, 
538 ; saluting ladies with, 539. 

Kissing comfits, 539, 

Kit-with-the-candle-stick, 87. 

Kite, bird of ill-omen, 131 ; curious no- 
tion respecting, 132. 

Knotgrass, hindei's growth, 225. 

Lace songs, 539. 

Lachrymatory vials, 379. 

Lady-bird, term of endearment, 253. 

Lady-smocks, 225. 

Lamb ale, 312. 

Lamb-mass, 320. 

Lambert's (St.) Day, 324. 

Lamb's-wool, 205. 

Lammas Day, 320. 

Lamps, perpetual, 383. 

Lapwing, an eccentric bird, 132 ; sym- 
bol of insincerity, 133 ; draws pur- 
suers from its nest, 133. 

Lark, changes eyes with toad, 134 ; song 
of, 135 ; mode of capturing, 134. 

Laudatory verses, affixed to tombs, 377. 

Laugh-and-lie-down,game at cards, 410. 

Laurel, symbol of victory, 225. 

Lavoka, French dance, 428. 

Leap-frog, 409. 

I,eather-coat, name of apple, 206. 

Leech, 281. 

Leek, on St. David's Day, 226, 303. 

Leet ale, 312, 548. 

Lent, Jack-a-lent made at, 299 ; flesh- 
meat not sold during, 300. 

Leprosy, 280. 

Lethargy, confounded with apoplexy, 
280. 

Letters, Emmanuel prefixed to, 540. 



Light-o'-love, tune of dance, 429. 
Lightning, persons struck by, accounted 

holy, 92. 
Lily, 226. 
Lion, supposed generosity of, 193 ; will 

not injure a royal prince, 194; kept 

without food, 194. 
Liver, seat of love, 494 ; absence of 

blood in, 478. 
Livery, to sue one's, 54T. 
Lizard, said to be venomous, 253 ; used 

by witches, 254. 
Loach breeds fleas, 499. 
Loaf-mass, 320. 
Lob of spirits, i, 5, 8. 
Lob's pound, 8. 
Loggat, game so called, 410. 
Long-purplcs, name of orchis, 226. 
Loose, term in archery, 395. 
Lord jMayor's Day, 327; show, 315 ; 

fool, 327. 
Love-charms, 359. 
Love-day, 541. 
Love-in-idleness, 227. 
Love-lock, 480. 
Love-philtres, 227, 264, 359. 
Lovers, eccentricities of, 361, 406, 478, 

note, 534. 
Lucky days, 512. 

Mab, fairy queen, 4, 5, 24. 

Magpie, regarded as mysterious bird, 
135 ; charms for averting ill-luck of 
seeing, 136; nicknamed magot-pie, 

Magic, system of, 482 ; verses, 508. 

Mahu, prince of darkness, 61. 

Mahomet's dove, 115. 

Man in the moon, 68, 244. 

Mandrake, resemblance of, to human 
figure, 228 ; watched over by Satan, 
230 ; its groans, 228 ; superstitions 
relating to, 229-231. 

Manningtree ox, 317. 

Marbles, 411. 

Marigold, opens its flowers at sun's bid- 
ding, 230. 

Marriage, 342-361 ; ceremony mostly 
on Sunday, 358, 359. 

Martin, unlucky to molest a, 136 ; builds 
near human habitations, 136. 

Martin's (St.) Day, 328 ; summer, 131. 

Martlemas, 328. 

Marv-bud, name for marigold, 231. 

Maiikin, used for hare, 168, note. 

May-day observances, 305. 

Maying, going a, 307. 

Mavpole, 307. 

Meadow cress, 213. 

Measles, 281. 



INDEX. 



555 



Medlar, applied to woman of loose char- 
acter, 231. 

Merlin, 511 ; prophecies of, 515. 

Mermaid, 500-503. 

Meteors, regarded as ominous, SS, 516; 
names for, 83. 

Metrical charms, 508. 

Michaelmas, 324. 

Midsummer Eve, 21S, 318; man, 318; 
watch, 315. 

Military lore, 541. 

Mill, name for nine-men's-morris, 413. 

Mines, guarded by evil spirits, 59 ; true- 
penny, mining term, 542. 

Minnow, term of contempt, 503. 

Miracle-plays, 313. 

Mirror, bears surprised by, 164. 

Mistletoe, notions respecting, 231, 232. 

Mock-water, 295. 

Moist star, name for moon, 74. 

Moldwarp, term for mole, 195. 

Mole said to be blind, 194. 

Moles on body ominous, 495. 

I\Ioon, adoration of, 69 ; ecfipse of, 71 ; 
man in tiie, 68, 69, 244 ; sanguine color 
of, 73, 516 ; paleness of, 73 ; weather- 
lore of, 76-78 ; insane persons affected 
^J) 73 ; swearing by, 70 ; enchant- 
ment of, 71 ; invocation of, 70; in- 
constancy of, 70 ; horns of, 77 ; moist- 
ure of, 74 ; influence over agricultural 
aflairs, 75 ; wnxing and waning of, 76 ; 
affected by witchcraft, 71. 

Moon-calf, 77. 

Moralities, 314. 

Moiris-dance, 186, note, 308, 311, 431. 

Moth, a fairy, 9 ; insect, 254. 

Mother, name for hysteria, 275. 

Mother of all humors, the moon, 74. 

Mouse, term of endearment, 195. 

IMouse-hunt, 195. 

Mummy, 282. 

IMurdered persons bleed at approach of 
murderer, 486. 

^lushroom, superstitions relating to, 

Music, ascribed to fairies, 17 ; as a medi- 
cal agency, 278 ; cure for madness, 
277 ; at funerals, 381 ; weddings, 352 ; 
of the spheres, 80. 

Muss, a scramble, 411. 

Mustard, 232; mustard-seed, a fairy, 9. 

Narcissus, legend concerning, 233. 
Negro, form of evil spirit, 53. 
Nicholas's (St.) Day, 328; patron of 

children, 328 ; clerks, cant term for 

highwaymen, 329. 
Night crow, 150; heron, 150; raven, 150. 
Nightingale, sings with breast on thorn, 



137 ; evil spirits assume form of, 54; 

story of, and glow-worm, 138. 
Nightmare, charms for, 283. 
Nine-holes, old game, 41 1. 
Nine-men's-morris, rustic game, 411. 
Nine Worthies, the, 316. 
Noddy, game at cards, 413. 
Nose, bleeding of, unlucky, 266, 516. 
jVoz't'in qiiiitque, game of dice, 413. 
Numbers, odd, 40. 
Nuptial kiss, 351. 
Nutmeg, gift at Christmas, 233. 

O ho ! exclamation, 530. 

Oak, crown of, a mark of honor, 233 ; 

Heme's, 233. 
Oberon, king of fairyland, 2, 3. 
Obidicut, evil spirit, 61. 
Odd numbers, 40. 
Olive, emblem of peace, 234. 
One-and-thirty, old game, 399. 
Osprey, fascinating influence of, 138. 
Ostrich, extraordinary digestion of, 138, 

139- 

Otnit, German story of, 3, 14. 

Ouphe, name for fairy, 9, 17. 

Our Lady's smock, 225. 

Ousel, name for blackbird, 100. 

Owl, bird of ill-omen, 139; legend con- 
cerning, 142. 

Owlet's wing used by witches, 141. 

Oysters, proverb relating to, 468. 

Paddock, term for toad, 144, 262. 

Pageants, 315. 

Palm, synibol of victory, 234. 

Palmers, name for pilgrims, 235. 

Palmistry, 475, 490. 

Paralysis, 284. 

Parish-top, 413. 

Parrot, restless before rain, 143 ; taught 
unlucky words, 143, 

Partridge, 133. 

Passing-bell, 366. 

Patrick (St.) drives reptiles from Ire- 
land, 257 ; his festival, 304 ; purga- 
tory, 304, 368. 

Patrons, praying for, 543. 

Pavan, a dance, 429. 

Peacock, its proverbial use, 143. 

Peajock, peacock so called, 144. 

Pear, 235. 

Pearls, swallowing of, 392 ; powdered, 
thrown over sovereigns, 391 ; medici- 
nal properties of, 392 ; legendary 
origin of, 392. 

Peas-blossom, name of fairy, 9. 

Peascod wooing, 235. 

Peg-a-lantcrn, 87, note. 

Peg-morris, game so called, 412. 



556 



INDEX. 



Pelican, feedsyoung ones with her blood, 

144 ; hatched dead, 145. 
Periapts, 506. 
Pheasant, 145. 

Philip, name for sparrow, 154. 
Philomel, term for nightingale, 13S. 
Philosopher's stone, 284. 
Phcenix, rises from its own ashes, 145. 
Pigeon, feathers of, unlucky, 367 ; used 

as carrier, 146 ; constancy of, 147. 
Pike, old name for, 503. 
Pilgrims, 235. 

Pillory, mode of punishment, 437. 
Piskey, Devonshire name for fairy, 6. 
Pismire, name for ant, 250. 
Pixy, name for fairy, 6. 
Pixy-led, misled by fairies, 8. 
Planets, 78 ; influence of, 79 ; irregular 

motion of, 78. 
Plantain, its medicinal use, 76, 236 ; 

water, 268. 
Pleurisy, 281. 
Plica Polonica, 190. 
Pluck a crow, no. 
Plucking geese, a boy's sport, 119. 
Poake-ledden, 8. 

Poison, vulgar error relating to, 286. 
Polecat, 196. 
Pomander, 287. 

Pomewater, name of apple, 207. 
Pooka, 6. 

Poor man's parmacetti, 267. 
Poperin, name for pear, 235. 
Popinjay, name for parrot, 143. 
Poppy, deadly qualities of, 237. 
Porcupine darts his quills, 196. 
Porpoise, weather-lore of, 503. 
Portents, belief in, 516. 
Posy-rings, 388, 389. 
Potato, 237. 
Poverty, badge of, 521. 
Prayers, of Church, morbific influence 

of,372; witches say backwards, 40,41. 
Press, old torture, 43S. 
Primavista, game at cards, 414. 
Primero, 414. 
Primrose, 237. 

Priser, term for a wrestler, 423. 
Prisoii bars or base, rustic game, 397. 
Prophecy, at death, 362. 
Proud tailor, name for goldfinch, 119. 
Proverbs, 444-474. 
Puck, name of fairy, 5-S, 1 1, 87. 
Punishments, 433-443. 
Push, exclamation, 498 ; pin, game, 415. 
Puttock, name for kite, 132. 

Quails, 148 ; fighting, 148. 
Quarry, term in falconry, 124. 
Quintain, 415. 



Quoits, 416. 

Rabbit, 196; suckers, 196. 

Race of horses, term for a stud, 193. 

Rack, torture of, 438. 

Racking clouds, 96. 

Ragged-robin, 213. 

Rainbow, 91. 

Rapture, name for trance, 272, 273. 

Rat, rhymed to death, 197 ; leaving a 
ship, ominous, 198. 

Raven, bird of ill-omen, 149 ; supposed 
longevity of, 149 ; deserts its young, 
151 ; feathers, used by witches, 1 5 1. 

Red blood, sign of courage, 477. 

Red pestilence, 285. 

Reed, for shepherds' pipes, 238. 

Rere-mouse, name for bat, 162. 

Rheumatism, 288. 

Rhyne toll, old manorial custom, 167. 

Rings, symbolical use, 3S6 ; exchange 
in marriage contracts, 346 ; death's- 
head, 388 ; running for the, 417; rush, 
242 ; posy, 388 ; token, 387 ; thumb, 
389- 

Rivo, an exclamation, 530. 

Robin Goodfellow, 5-7, 86. 

Robin Hood, 310. 

Robin Redbreast covers dead bodies 
with leaves, 152. 

Rook, weather-lore of, 153 ; bird of good 
omen, 153 ; deserting a rookery, 153. 

Rose, associated with " Wars of Roses," 
239,240; divination by, 318; sym- 
bolical use, 238 ; customs connected 
with, 238 ; cakes, 239 ; water, 239. 

Rosemajy, strengthens memory, 240; 
symbol of remembrance, 240 ; at wed- 
dings and funerals, 240 ; for garnish- 
ing dishes at Christmas, 241. 

Roundel, a dance, 429. 

Rouse, 528. 

Ruddock, name .for redbreast, 153. 

Rue, divination by, 318. 

Running, for the ring, 417; the figure 
of eight, 417; counter, hunting term, 
178. 

Rush-bearings, 242. 

Rush candle, 242. 

Rush-ring, 242. 

Sabbath of witches, 30. 

Saffron, its uses, 242, 243. 

Sagittary, 543. 

Salad-days, 543. 

Saliva, medical notion respecting, 2S9. 

Salt, used metaphorically, 543 ; sitting 

below the, 526. 
Salutations, 544. 
Sampson, Agnes, reputed witch, 33. 



INDEX. 



557 



Satyrs' dance, 430. 

Scale of dragon, used by witches, 1S5. 

Scambling days, 301. 

Scammell or scamel, I2r. 

Scare-crow, 109. 

Scrofula, cure for, 279. 

Sea, source of dew, 90 ; persons drowned 
in, 3S2; eagle, name for osprey, 138 ; 
gull, 121 ; niell or nicw, 121 ; mon- 
ster. 504. 

Secondary rainbow, 91. 

See-saw, game, 417. 

Seel, term in falconry, 127. 

Serpent, called a worm, 254 ; its forked 
tongue supposed to injure, 255 ; said 
to cause death without pain, 255, 256 ; 
used l)y witclies, 255 ; emblem of in- 
gratitude, 256 ; cures for bite of, 256 ; 
driven out of Ireland by St. Patricl<, 
257 ; casting of its slough, 257. 

Serpigo, name for skin disease, 288. 

Servants, taking oath of fidelity, 544 ; 
gold chains worn by, 544; attend 
bare-headed, 545. 

Sheep-shearing customs, 317. 

Sheer ale, 528. 

Shepherd's, mill, 413 ; purse, 26S. 

Shepherd-queen, 318. 

Sheriffs' post, 545. 

Shoe-tye, name for a traveller, 545. 

Shoeing-horn, 545. 

.Shooting stars, 516. 

Shore, Jane, 27, 37. 

Shove-groat, 417; shove-halfpenny, 41S. 

Shrouding-sheet, 380. 

Shrove Tuesday, 299. 

Sickness, 288. 

Sieve, used by witches, 34 ; toss in a, 
punishment so called, 441. 

Sigh, notions respecting, 289. 

Signatures, doctrine of, 218. 

Silence before thunder, 93. 

" Six Worthies," 316. 

Skiinmington, old ceremony of, 443. 

Slide, board, or groat, 418, note ; thrift, 
418, note. 

Slip-thrift, 418, note. 

Slough of snake, 257. 

Slow-worm, 255. 

.Smulkin, evil s[iirit, 6r. 

Smithfield fair, 321. 

Snails, charming of, 19S ; omens of fine 
weather, 199. 

Sneak-cup, 52S. 

Sneck-up, exclamation, 531. 

Snipe, applied to foolish man, 154. 

Snowballs, 418. 

.Solemn siqiper, 545. 

Sop o' the moonshine, 78. 

Souls, transmigration of, 50. 



' Soul-bell, 367 ; mass cakes, 379. 

Souling, going a, 326. 

.Span-counter, old game, 418. 

Sparrow, called Philii), 154; hawk, 154. 

Spear-grass, 243. 

Spectre huntsman, 49. 

Spider, considered venomous, 258 ; cure 
for jaundice and ague, 258 ; web used 
for stopping blood, 258 ; bottled, 259 ; 
gossamer, notion respecting, 259. 

Spirits, various kinds of, 60 ; unlucky 
to cross their path, 48 ; disajjpcar at 
cock-crow, 104 ; inii)atient at being 
interrogated, 45 ; their appearance, 
45 ; walking of, by way of penance, 
46; reason forappearing, 46 ; allotted 
time for work, 47 ; signs of their ap- 
proach, 47 ; of revenge, 58. 

Spleen, supposed cause of laughter, 496. 

Spy, I, exclamation, 531. 

Squalls, weather-lore of, 95. 

Stalking-horse, 191. 

Starling, 155. 

Stars, influence on mundane events, So ; 
heroes reckoned among, 82. 

Statute-cap, 546. 

.Stephen's (St.) Day, hunting wren on, 
501. 

Sterility, 289. 

Stigmatic, deformed person so called, 
270. 

Stocks, old punishment, 440. 

-Stool-ball, old game, 419. 

Stoop, or swoop, term in falconry, 124. 

Stover, fodder for cattle, 243. 

Strappado, military punishment, 440. 

Strawberry, 243. 

.Succubi, class of devils, 78. 

.Suicide, 290. 

Sun, weather-lore of, 63-65 ; dancing 
of, 63 ; cloudy rising, ominous, 64 ; 
red sunrise, 64; watery sunset, 65; 
sujiposcd to be a ])lanct, 62. 

Sunclav, fashionable day for weddings, 

358.' 
Sunshine in March, 68. 
Swallow, harbinger of spring, 155 ; bird 

of good omen, 156. 
Swan, sings before dcatli, 156. 
Sword, swearing by, 542 ; dance, 430. 
Sympathetic indications, 518. 

Tailor, exclamation, 531. 

Tailor's goose, name for pressing-iron, 

118. 
Tassel-gentle, n.ame of hawk, 157. 
Tavy's^St.) Day, 226, 304. 
Tawdry lace, 325. 

Tears, of the deer, 180 ; crocodile, 176T 
Teeth, superstitions relating to, 332, ^^2- 



558 



INDEX. 



Telme's (St.) fire, meteor so called, S3. 

Ten bones, name for fingers, 491. 

Ten commandments, 491. 

Tennis, 419. 

Termagant, tyrant of miracle-plays, 313. 

Tewksbury mustard, 232. 

Theatrical lore, 546. 

Thorns, legend relating to, 244. 

Threshold, bride must not cross, 358. 

Thumb, biting of, an insult, 492 ; rings, 

389. 

Thunder, notions relatmg to, 91 ; bolt, 
91 ; stone, 91. 

Tick-tack, old game, 421. 

Tiger, roars in stormy weather, 199. 

Tire, term in falconry, 127. 

Titania, fairy queen, 2, 3, 14. 

Tilly-vally, exclamation, 53 1. 

Toad, evil spirit likened to, 262 ; changes 
eyes with lark, 134; said to be ven- 
omous, 261 ; stone, 260. 

Tokens, plague-spots, 2S5. 

Tomb, ornamenting, 377. 

Tongue, blister on, 266. 

Toothache, 507 ; caused by a worm, 290. 

Torches at weddings, 357. 

Toss in a sieve, punishment so called, 
441. 

Touching for king's evil, 279. 

Tournaments, 547. 

Tower, term in falconry, 123. 

Transmigration of souls, 50. 

Tread a measure, dance, 431. 

Trefoil, divination by, 318. 

Trial by the stool, for detecting witches, 

Trip and go, a morns-dance, 431. 
Troll-my-dame, or Troll-madam, game 

so called, 422. 
Truepenny, mining term, 542. 
Trump, old game, 422. 
Trumpet, for announcing visitors, 547. 
Tub-fast, 292. 
Turkey, 158. 

Turquoise, supposed virtues ot, 393. 
Tutelary guardians, 57. 
Twelfth Day, 297. 
Tybert or Tybalt, cat so called, 172. 

Unicorn, mode of betraying, 199. 
Up-spring, German dance, 431, 432. 
Urchin, name for fairy, 9, 17. 
Urchins' dance, 9. 

Valentine's (St.) Day, 298; birds choose 
their mates on, 298 ; selecting valen- 
tines on, 298 ; customs in France on, 
298. 

Vervain, divination by, 318. 

Vice, character in old miracle-plays, 314. 



Violet, associated with early death, 244; 
superstition relating to, 244. 

Vints liniare, 75- 

Vitalis (St.) invoked in case of night- 
mare, 283. 
Vulture, 158. 

Wagtail, used in opprobrious sense, 158. 

Wakes, 331. 

Walking fire, name for ignis fatitus, 86. 

Wandering, knight, name of sun, 63 ; 
stars, 78, 79. 

War-cry, 547. 

Warden, name of pear, 235. 

Wasp, 262. 

Wassail, bowl, 205 ; candle, 330. 

Wat, name for hare, 18S. 

Water, casting, 293 ; galls, name for 
rainbow, 91. 

Waxen images, used by witches, 37. 

Weasel, considered ominous, 200 ; kept 
in houses, 200 ; said to be quarrel- 
some, 200. 

Weathercocks, 108. 

Web-and-pin, name for cataract, 269. 

Wedding-torch, 357. 

Were- wolf, mark of, 31. 

Westward, ho, exclamation, 531. 

Whale, 504. 

Wheel, punishment of, 441. 

Whipping, 442. 

Whistling of swan, 157. 

White dog-rose, 240. 

Whitsun, ale, 312; mysteries, 311. 

Whitsuntide, 310. 

Wild-goose chase, 118. 

Will-o'-the-wisp, 8, 85. 

Will-with-a-wisp, 87. 

Willow, symbol of sadness, 245 ; gar- 
lands made of, 245. 

Winchester, college, custom at, 387; 
goose, 119. 

Wind, weather-lore of, 94 ; sale of, 34. 

Winding-sheet, 3S0, 516. 

Wisp, punishment for a scold, 442. 

Witches, in " Macbeth," 27 ; create 
storms, 32 ; drawing blood from, 32 ; 
propitiation of, 32 ; powers limited, 
31 ; harass horses, 190; offspring of, 
40; say their prayers backwards, 40; 
sell or give winds, 34 ; ointment, 36 ; 
intercourse between, and demons, 40; 
protection from, 32 ; vanish at will, 
35 ; destroy cattle, 39 ; look into fu- 
turity, 36 ; beard, characteristic of, 
29 ; trials, 36. 

Witch of Brentford, 27. 

Wits, the five, 496. 

Woodcock, applied to a foolish person, 
159- 



I 



INDEX. 



559 



Worm, a poor creature, 256 ; name for 
serpent, 254 ; toothache, said to be 
caused by, 290. 

Wormwood used in weaning, 246. 

Wren, its diminutiveness, 160. 



Wrestling, 422. 



Yew, planted in churchyards, 247 ; 
stuck in shroud, 274, 380 ; poisonous 
qualities, 248. 



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EDWARD GIBBON By J. C. Morison. 

SIR WALTER SCOTT By R. H. Hutton. 

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY By J. A. Symonds. 

DAVID HUME By T. H. Huxley. 

OLIVER GOLDSMITH By William Black. 

DANIEL DEFOE By William Minto. 

ROBERT BURNS By J. C. Shairp. 

EDMUND SPENSER By R. W. Church. 

WILLIAM M. THACKERAY By Anthony Trollope. 

EDMUND BURKE By John JMorley. 

JOHN MILTON By Mark Pattison. 

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE By Henry James, Jr. 

ROBERT SOUTHEY By E. Dowden. 

GEOFFREY CHAUCER By A.W.Ward. 

JOHN BUNYAN By J. A. Froude. 

WILLIAM COWPER By Goldwin Smith. 

ALEXANDER POPE By Leslie Stephen. 

LORD BYRON By John Nichol. 

JOHN LOCKE By Thomas Fowler. 

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH By F. W. H. Myers. 

JOHN DRYDEN By G. Saintsbury. 

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR By Sidney Colvin. 

THOMAS DE QUINCEY By David Masson. 

CHARLES LAMB By Alfred Ainger. 

RICHARD BENTLEY By R. C. Jebb. 

CHARLES DICKENS By A. W. Ward. 

THOMAS GRAY By E. W. Gosse. 

JONATHAN SWIFT By Leslie Stephen. 

LAURENCE STERNE By H. D. Traill. 

THOMAS B. MACAULAY By J. Cotter Morison. 

HENRY FIELDING By Austin Dobson. 

RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN By Mrs. Oliphant. 

Others to follow. 



I 



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SWINTONS STUDIES IN ENGLISH LITERATURE. Being Typical 
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as an aid to Systematic Literary Study. By William Swinton. With 
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BAYNE'S LESSONS FROM MY MASTERS : Carlyle, Tennyson, and 
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DESHLER'S AFTERNOONS WITH THE POETS. Afternoons with 
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IIOWITT'S HOMES AND HAUNTS OF THE BRITISH POETS. 
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DISRAELI'S AMENITIES OF LITERATURE. Consi-sting of Sketches 
and Characters of English Literature. By I. D'Israeli, D.C.L., F.S. A. 
2 vols., 12mo, Cloth, $2.50. 

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of the Kiiifj arranged in order. With nxnuerous Illustrations aud Three 
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PRIMERS OF ENGLISH LITERATURE : The Rnmanee Period— The 
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MISS MITFORD'S RECOLLECTIONS. Recollections of a Literary 
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THE FRIENDSHIPS OF MISS MITFORD, as Recorded in Letters from 
her Literary Correspondents. Edited by the Rev. A. G. L'Estrange. 
12mo, Cloth, $2.00 ; 4to, Paper, 25 cents. 

LAMBS' TALES FROi^I SHAKESPEARE. In 2 vols. Vol. I. Comedies. 
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MACAULAY'S LIFE AND LETTERS. By his Nephew, George Otto 
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FROUDE'S CARLYLE. Thomas Carlyle. A History of tin; First Forty 
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Cycloptedia of British and American Poetry. Edited by Epes Sargent. 
Large 8vo, nearly 1000 pages ; Containing nearly 2000 Selections from 
over 750 Authors ; Arranged Chronologically : with a Biographical 
Sketch, and a Critical Estimate of each Author. Ilhmiinated Cloth, 
with Colored Edges, $4.50 ; Half Leather, $5.00. 



Mr. Sargent has shown tlie knowledge and the skill that might have been expected 
from so well-read and so accomplished a writer; he has shown a catholicity as well as a 
sureness of taste; he has proceeded on what seems to me the true principle of arrange- 
ment, that of chronology; lie has made his selections as fnll as he could consistently with 
the multitude to be selected from, neither rejecting old ones because they were old, nor 
accepting new ones becaute they were new, but earnestly aiming in both cases to represent 
the great body of British and American poets at their best, and their best only ; and he has 
felt the natural demand of its readers for information coucerniMg it and its authors — an 
imperative demand which he has fulfilled with a thoroughness that is honorable to his 
scholarship, and witli a niode&ty that is honorable to his genius. That such a work as tliis 
might have been done diflerenily I can see; that it could have been done better I do not 
see at all.— K. II. Stoi)1>aki>, in The Critic, N. Y. 

The special value of this collection is in the fact that it expresses the taste and feeling 
of one of the most cultured men of this generation, who, with a poet's sensibility, spent his 
whole life iu the companionship and atmosphere of books and authors. His judgment 
could be trusted. His taste was almost unerring in literary matters. His criticism was as 
keen as it was genial, and seemed to detect the faulty and the false almost by instinct. It 
is a great privilege to have such a man's selection of the poems in the English language 
worth preserving. Mr. Sargent's work deserves special commendation for the exquisite 
justice it does to°]iving writers but little known. It is a volume of rare and precious flow- 
ers, culled because of their intrinsic value, without regard to the writers' Lm\(i.— Evening 
Express, N. Y. 

Mr. Sargent was eminently fitted for the preparation of a work of this kind. Few men 
possessed a wider or more i;rofouud knowledge of English literature; and his judgment 
was clear, acnte, and discriminating. * * * The beautiful typography and other exterior 
charms broadly hint at the rich feast of instruction and enjoyment which the superb vol- 
ume is eminently fitted to furnish.— X 1'. Times. 

We commend it highly. It contains so many of the notable poems of our language, 
and so much that is sound poetry, if not notable, that it will make itself a pleasure 
wherever it is found.— A'. 1'. Herald. 

A handsome volume, which will give the purest pleasure to great numbers of hearts 
and households. * * * Most readers will find their favorite poems, and selections from their 
favorite poets. * ' * As a cyclopsdia for refeieuce, and a volume for general reading, it is 
both useful and delightfnl.— Oftserve/-, N. Y. 

We consider Mr. Sargent's " Cyclopedia of British and American Poetry " the best 
of all such cyclopaedias in existence.— Ci^/aio Express. 

A poet himself of no mean reputation, and a man of large experience and excellent taste 
in literature, he possessed just the qualities requisite for the diflicnlt task of sifting the great 
mass of Briti.'h and American poetry, and selecting not only the poems which Mere good iu 
tliemselves.bnt those which most fairly represent llie genius and style of the several au- 
thors, and still keep the book down to reasonable proportions. His biographical sketches 
of the poets are admirable, giving just the information a reader cares for. We tliink 
Mr. Sargenfs work is even belter than Mr. Bryant's, and that is of itself no small praise. 
— Troy Press. 

We have in this volume the choicest from what would fill many library shelves, and 
also, at hand heie, many fragmentary pieces, familiar favorites, but such as otherwise we 
should not know where to find when wanted.— T/js Advance, Chicago. 

The selections are so judiciously made and so handsomely clothed that the public 
cannot fail to be grateful, both for the skill of the editor and the taste of the publishers. 
— Christian Advocate, N. Y. 

Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. 

tg^ HAiirEK & BuoTiiEKG loHl .lend the above work by mail, postage prepaid, to any part of 
the United States, on receipt of the price. ^ 

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